Teaching vs. Telling. The division is deep.
Context
From December to May, I was teaching an online class in early British literature that required me to devise ways for students to learn in an online-only environment--and really learn, or why were we going through the motions? I was concerned with making students' means of acquiring information as interactive as possible, and with assigning activities that reinforce the learning while also getting them to think a bit deeper about the ideas, and make connections--all of the things a good instructor is supposed to do.
During this time, I was involved--at my 8-5 job--in ongoing revision to a training certificate program for entry-level adminstrative professional staff. In the process, the business writing class that we teach was moved to the "II" certificate from the "I" certificate--and I took exception, because even staff who are not writing long documents spend a significant amount of time communicating by email--both internally and externally. So I proposed something like an "Email Best Practices" class, which would either be taught in person (maybe for an hour) or could be an online course.
When our director said no to a traditional class and yes to the online training, I envisioned something that would allow the user to make choices between good and bad email practices while delivering the essential information--something really interactive that would actually teach. I don't really think that the 6-hour, 1- or 2-day business writing class accomplishes much in the way of making the participants' writing better, but it does give them strategies for more effective communication. With the email training, I wanted to actually curb some bad email practies.
Dilemma/Problem
Because the online class is part of a certificate program, and there are people who need to finish in the next few months, there was a bit of anxiety among participants in the program. This led to the director of my department giving--well, more an ultimatum than a deadline. At any rate, it has a very different feel than most of my deadlines, perhaps because of how arbitrary it is. And it's not like it's the only thing on my plate--quite the contrary. So speaking to my direct supervisor, who is a reasonable person, I received a recommendation (only more forceful than a recommendation, becuase it is bound to the aritrary deadline): just throw some information into PowerPoint and we will convert it to an online class from there.
Just. Throw. Information. Into. PowerPoint. That's the elearning equivalent of an all-lecture course, and not at all what I had in mind for this course that was really supposed to teach something--to help people to communicate better via email. I protested. I bargained. I philosophized. But no. This is the task I have been given--use PowerPoint as an information dump. I co-presented at a conference earlier in the year about making PowerPoint more interactive. I have been trying to use PowerPoint to develop interactive tutorials that I can post in Blackboard to give my students an interactive, self-guided lesson. This upsets me so much.
The Crux
What I realized, speaking with my boss today, is that the contrast between what I want to do and what I have time to do taps into my conception of teaching, and my perception of myself and my role as a teacher--even in designing online materials. I want to help people to learn. I don't just want them to fill a checkbox. This isn't like the type of compliance training that only requires that the information be available, and gives you a checkbox to acknowledge that it has passed in front of your eyeballs. I wanted more from this. So my level of satisfaction from this project has just decreased dramatically. It is no longer a teaching problem; it is an efficiency problem.
Solutions and Theorizing...
I could, of course, just create this first version and then revise it and make it as great as I want... That option was offered, but I don't think that will happen. I simply don't work like that. I need purpose and momentum, and once it's up, and not really mine any more but the property of the department (all of you "#altac" people out there, take note--this is life outside of academia), I will simply feel done with it and ready to move on.
Our compromise is to call the training "Tips for," and to change what I saw as the overall purpose. Instead of teaching, we will simply be listing best practices, more or less. It won't stick. It's not designed to. So it maybe doesn't matter? *sigh* Not ideal for my original intention.
But I was thinking... There is a place and a time for giving information, and it can be accomplished in different media differently. As soon as I stopped thinking of it as a "course" and started thinking of it as an "FYI" (more or less), my purpose manifested itself in interesting ways. Sitting down to introduce the slide show (which will be without sound, because who has time for that?), I immediately asked the question, "Why do we need to write better emails?" This lead me to investigate statistics on how much we use email in a typical business day. Email is professional communiation. So my purpose became, "Let's make it professional communication--and here are some tips."
I can tell people things--I do it all the time. But I do have to have a purpose in doing so, whether or not it is well-articulated.
Then, there's elearning itself. There are the really interactive courses (some of them taking up to 30 minutes because hey--the more time you spend clicking through, the more you learn, right? or not...) and the less interactive. There are some that simply talk to you and others that have you play games. Some are literally just words on the screen. But each fulfills its purpose. Some compliance training is like the screen that you sign before picking up a prescription. Anyone know the information that they're referring to? Anyone care much? But someone needs that signature for their records. Similarly, people dealing with biohazards need to have several text-heavy screens floated past them so that they can click "acknowledge." I'm not making this up. It's scary, and I don't believe in it, but that training is fulfilling its own legalistic purpose--which is most emphatically not to teach.
So elearning, you might say, has different genres. And those different genres make distinct use of the capabilities of the software, some extremely minimal, others extensive. And maybe compliance training isn't bad training, it's simply what it is--driven by its own purpose which has eveything to do with the liability of the provider and absolutely nothing to do with the increased understanding of the user. So... genres.
It doesn't make me happy to have to shift from elearning as a teaching platform to elearning as an information dump, but at least I have a way to reconcile myself to the circumstances and something to think further about. Genres of elearning.
Showing posts with label active learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label active learning. Show all posts
Friday, June 19, 2015
Monday, August 19, 2013
Let's Communicate like Adults: Styles and Types
I have been fascinated by personality styles for a while now, owing in large part to my own introspection and the abundance of online "tests" for this or that. While I am working on how personality types can help us to understand our own reading preferences, including what narrative strategies of engagement we prefer, on my Booknotes blog, I am also interested in other ways in which personality types and communication styles might speak across the teaching-training divide.
I would argue that the most prominent classification system for personality types is the Meyers-Briggs classification system, which relies on the categories of Introversion/Extroversion, Intuitive/Sensing Feeling/Thinking, Perceiving/Judging. From these categories, we get 16 "types":
In my training department, rather than talking about personality types, which are more the realm of psychology, we talk about communication styles. And communication intersects neatly with teaching, training, and rhetoric. Not only does our department (but not me personally) teach these communication styles so that people who take the class can learn how to communicate more effectively with others in their offices, communication is intrinsic to training and to teaching--and, well, rhetoric (an erstwhile specialty of mine) is communication, and knowing how to communicate to/with an audience. Adding a self-reflective layer and a way to understand one's intended audience can only be helpful, particularly for Freshman comp and for students who do not already have a knack for targeting a specific audience effectively. The communication styles that we discuss in our training department are called "the four bird mode" or, quite ridiculously, "DOPE," which stands for
The bird designation is both useful and very annoying, because the classification system attempts both to use and to distance itself from the traditional associations with the birds. Dove does, in fact, mean peacemaker; Owl does not precicely mean wise, though it does have to do with collecting information; Peacock isn't really supposed to mean a strutting performer--except that it sort of does, and Eagle isn't actually a bird of prey, just an ultra-direct leader type. Sadly, the one I find the most offensive, with the least explanatory power at face value, is my own: Peacock. More on that in a minute...
There are some good explanations of this system online. It has the benefit of being simpler than Meyers-Briggs, and of dealing specifically with one aspect of personality--communication. Here is a paper-based (PDF) test, which includes descriptions of the birds; this site has a self-assessment questionaire. Here are two more sites with good explanations of the types:
The latter, in particular, has a comparative chart that tells you how to recognize each of the types and what their strengths, weaknesses, and bottom line are. I tested firmly as a Peacock, but I have more than a few Owl traits. On the whole, I am less happy with this schema than the Meyers-Briggs, which in some ways supports and in some ways contradicts the DOPE classification--the INFP "Idealist" could be an emotional Peacock who gets excited about ideas, and might be a "performer" in some ways, but is not necessarily a pushy attention-seeker...
What is interesting about the birds is the diagram on page 5 of this PDF (also above), which shows how controlling or supportive, direct or indirect each type is. I like to think I am direct, but also supportive--Peacock. This model substitutes "Assertiveness" for "Controlling." And this discussion translates the whole thing into practical terms--what you need to know in order to be able to communicate effectively with each of the types. Something to remember when doing a self-evaluation is that this schema is geared specifically to the workplace. So while this chart probably represents how I come across in meetings (as a Peacock):
I have more than a few Dove and Owl characteristics (INFP).
So how is all this useful? Well, in Training and Organizational Development, teaching people how to communicate effectively in an office environment is simply one of the services we offer. People don't know how to communicate. They butt heads. They misunderstand one another. They work inefficiently in groups. Aha--wait! There is the common ground I was looking for.
I think that in teaching, personality types and communication styles could be productively discussed with undergraduate students and employed in the classroom. Throughout the 1990s and forward, the mode of teaching has been shifting to prefer so-called "active learning," when it is in fact active learning and not simply a search-and-find activity by which the student receives the same information that would be handed out in a lecture. Active learning can be tricky, and involves more questioning than is typically permitted--at least at the secondary level. But what active learning means more often than not is more group work--projects and whatnot--which I hated when I was in school. Loathed. Because often there was someone else competing with or sabotaging my vision--which meant that I was inclined to take charge and cut the other person out. The PBS Kids show Arthur actually has a great episode on exactly this topic. Group work is difficult to manage as an inexperienced student negotiating one's own ego in relation to others. And it is equally difficult to negotiate as a teacher--at least, as a teacher who is trying to facilitate student success. And yet, as much as I hate to admit it, it really is a useful skill to be able to work with others on projects. But all of the group work in the world won't make students better prepared for group projects in the workplace--unless they are taught a little bit about how people work together, group dynamics, and how to negotiate the roles they are required to fill.
Enter communication styles.
With the resources online, it would be simple for a teacher to devote some time at the beginning of a class, or of the first group project, to a discussion of communication styles. While an Eagle might one day, under the constraints of a job title, be forced to subsume his or her personality in order to placate a boss, it might help a group of students to complete a project on time to have them assign a leadership role to the person who is the clear leader. Having a group of 4 Doves or 4 Owls (4 Eagles seems unlikely...) working on a project might be ill-advised--or it might be treated as a problem to acknowledge and strategize to overcome. Have the Owl of the group do the research (Owls love information-gathering); let the Peacock exert some creative control. Working together according to the students' natural inclinations is bound to produce a stronger product, teach them about themselves, and prepare them for the eventuality of higher-stakes group work. Add a self-reflective writing exercise at the end, and voila! You have some good pedagogy. And something to build on:
I would argue that the most prominent classification system for personality types is the Meyers-Briggs classification system, which relies on the categories of Introversion/Extroversion, Intuitive/Sensing Feeling/Thinking, Perceiving/Judging. From these categories, we get 16 "types":
- INFP
- INTP
- INFJ
- INTJ
- ISFP
- ISTP
- ISFJ
- ISTJ
- ENFP
- ENTP
- ENFJ
- ENTJ
- ESFP
- ESTP
- ESFJ
- ESTJ
In my training department, rather than talking about personality types, which are more the realm of psychology, we talk about communication styles. And communication intersects neatly with teaching, training, and rhetoric. Not only does our department (but not me personally) teach these communication styles so that people who take the class can learn how to communicate more effectively with others in their offices, communication is intrinsic to training and to teaching--and, well, rhetoric (an erstwhile specialty of mine) is communication, and knowing how to communicate to/with an audience. Adding a self-reflective layer and a way to understand one's intended audience can only be helpful, particularly for Freshman comp and for students who do not already have a knack for targeting a specific audience effectively. The communication styles that we discuss in our training department are called "the four bird mode" or, quite ridiculously, "DOPE," which stands for
- Dove
- Owl
- Peacock
- Eagle
The bird designation is both useful and very annoying, because the classification system attempts both to use and to distance itself from the traditional associations with the birds. Dove does, in fact, mean peacemaker; Owl does not precicely mean wise, though it does have to do with collecting information; Peacock isn't really supposed to mean a strutting performer--except that it sort of does, and Eagle isn't actually a bird of prey, just an ultra-direct leader type. Sadly, the one I find the most offensive, with the least explanatory power at face value, is my own: Peacock. More on that in a minute...
There are some good explanations of this system online. It has the benefit of being simpler than Meyers-Briggs, and of dealing specifically with one aspect of personality--communication. Here is a paper-based (PDF) test, which includes descriptions of the birds; this site has a self-assessment questionaire. Here are two more sites with good explanations of the types:
- "Are you. . . an Eagle, Peacock, Dove or Owl when you communicate?"
- "Team Communcation: Birds of a Feather"
The latter, in particular, has a comparative chart that tells you how to recognize each of the types and what their strengths, weaknesses, and bottom line are. I tested firmly as a Peacock, but I have more than a few Owl traits. On the whole, I am less happy with this schema than the Meyers-Briggs, which in some ways supports and in some ways contradicts the DOPE classification--the INFP "Idealist" could be an emotional Peacock who gets excited about ideas, and might be a "performer" in some ways, but is not necessarily a pushy attention-seeker...
What is interesting about the birds is the diagram on page 5 of this PDF (also above), which shows how controlling or supportive, direct or indirect each type is. I like to think I am direct, but also supportive--Peacock. This model substitutes "Assertiveness" for "Controlling." And this discussion translates the whole thing into practical terms--what you need to know in order to be able to communicate effectively with each of the types. Something to remember when doing a self-evaluation is that this schema is geared specifically to the workplace. So while this chart probably represents how I come across in meetings (as a Peacock):
- The Dove is sympathetic, moderate, people-focused.
- The Owl is technical, analytical, process-focused.
- The Peacock is expressive, persuasive, recognition-focused.
- The Eagle is bold, confident, results-focused.
I have more than a few Dove and Owl characteristics (INFP).
So how is all this useful? Well, in Training and Organizational Development, teaching people how to communicate effectively in an office environment is simply one of the services we offer. People don't know how to communicate. They butt heads. They misunderstand one another. They work inefficiently in groups. Aha--wait! There is the common ground I was looking for.
I think that in teaching, personality types and communication styles could be productively discussed with undergraduate students and employed in the classroom. Throughout the 1990s and forward, the mode of teaching has been shifting to prefer so-called "active learning," when it is in fact active learning and not simply a search-and-find activity by which the student receives the same information that would be handed out in a lecture. Active learning can be tricky, and involves more questioning than is typically permitted--at least at the secondary level. But what active learning means more often than not is more group work--projects and whatnot--which I hated when I was in school. Loathed. Because often there was someone else competing with or sabotaging my vision--which meant that I was inclined to take charge and cut the other person out. The PBS Kids show Arthur actually has a great episode on exactly this topic. Group work is difficult to manage as an inexperienced student negotiating one's own ego in relation to others. And it is equally difficult to negotiate as a teacher--at least, as a teacher who is trying to facilitate student success. And yet, as much as I hate to admit it, it really is a useful skill to be able to work with others on projects. But all of the group work in the world won't make students better prepared for group projects in the workplace--unless they are taught a little bit about how people work together, group dynamics, and how to negotiate the roles they are required to fill.
Enter communication styles.
With the resources online, it would be simple for a teacher to devote some time at the beginning of a class, or of the first group project, to a discussion of communication styles. While an Eagle might one day, under the constraints of a job title, be forced to subsume his or her personality in order to placate a boss, it might help a group of students to complete a project on time to have them assign a leadership role to the person who is the clear leader. Having a group of 4 Doves or 4 Owls (4 Eagles seems unlikely...) working on a project might be ill-advised--or it might be treated as a problem to acknowledge and strategize to overcome. Have the Owl of the group do the research (Owls love information-gathering); let the Peacock exert some creative control. Working together according to the students' natural inclinations is bound to produce a stronger product, teach them about themselves, and prepare them for the eventuality of higher-stakes group work. Add a self-reflective writing exercise at the end, and voila! You have some good pedagogy. And something to build on:
- From what you have learned about your personality type, discuss your approach to interaction in your classes or your approach to education in general.
- From what you have learned about your particular communication style, analyze the tone of your first argumentative paper.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Unpacking a Workshop Activity: "Last Man Standing," Communication Styles, and Resistance
On Friday, I participated in a Professional Development workshop conducted by the "soft skills" side of our department. I belong to the technology side. My side teaches tech skills; the "soft skills" people teach people and personal skills. The workshop title was "Interpersonal Communication."
I decided to take this workshop for a couple of basic reasons. Once a week (or less often, if we're lucky), we have "Huddles"--meetings with the whole group, which includes both groups of trainers, people who design online training, administrative support, and directors. Unfortunately, because our main director is on the "soft skills" side of things, the emphasis tends to be on things that really don't concern the tech trainers, which is irritating, and frequently, there are unexplained references to things taught by the soft skills people. So, for example, different members of the department were being referred to as "dove" or "peacock" in order to explain certain traits that the exhibited. Eventually, I learned that the birds were representative of communication styles as taught in the "Interpersonal Communication" class, so I signed up for the 3-hour class (which our director has since made mandatory).
On the other hand, communication is sort of what I do. For years, I taught composition and rhetoric, until I had a pretty good command of key rhetorical concepts like "appeal" and "resistance." Audience has been an interest of mine since long before graduate school--specifically, the ways in which fiction authors place their readers in certain roles using narrative clues like direct address. One of the things I want to return to is audience engagement by way of open-ended questions or lack of resolution in fictional narratives. I am pretty adept at written communication. So on the one hand, a class on "Interpersonal Communication" simply provides a new vocabulary to discuss something that already interests me.
Finally, I am painfully introspective and enjoy considering categories. So personality types and communication types are a lot of fun--as long as they don't result in typing and stereotyping. I can "own" the INFP label that Meyers-Briggs assigns, but if people are given advice on how to circumvent my most "peacock" tendencies, or if I stand to be brushed aside in meetings because I'm a "peacock" (thing "persuader"--not my term--rather than flashy and arrogant, though that implication is impossible to avoid), then I have a problem with the categories. But figuring that I could learn something useful, I signed up.
I see immediate applications for personality types and communication styles in undergraduate education, as I do believe that raising--and shaping--self-awareness in students is a valuable part of humanities education, but more on that later. Right now, I want to focus on one particular activity, which we learned as a group when an outside trainer came last July to teach us how to be better facilitators (not really something that was useful for tech trainers, who simply show-and-tell). It is called "Last Man Standing"--though shouldn't it be "Last Person Standing," or "Last Group Standing"?
In the context of the particular class, we were asked about barriers to communication. Each table (a group of 3 or 4) was asked to brainstorm as many possible barriers to communication as they could, writing each one on a post-it note. When the time (about 4-6 minutes) was up, we were asked to arrange our post-its into groups. Then, each group picked a representative to go to the front of the class and take turns placing a post-it on the board. Duplicates were not permitted, so if one team had "technology," another team could not get credit for having "technology" as well--or a term that was judged as too close to "technology," eg. "technophobia" or "technological innovation." As the game progressed, team after team will run out of unique contributions, and the game is over when one team is left standing with additional unique ideas.
It wasn't particularly well-executed in this workshop for a number of reasons. First, our instructor (and my co-worker), who tends to be a bit too self-conscious in spite of the fact that he is basically as competent as anyone else, called in another trainer, who designed the course, to be the "judge" and determine whether the particular post-it term was permissible or whether it had already been used. As she is a very "inside the box," more-restrictive-than-literal-interpretation kind of person, she wound up overturning more possibilities than she should have, closing down rather than opening up the discussion in a number of ways. For example, the facilitator could not see how "politics" could be a barrier to communication, and interpreted "having an accent" as being indistinguishable from "culture." Although he didn't think about it--and possibly others didn't either--he rather compromised his own credibility as an instructor by bringing her in as an "expert" rather than facilitating the exercise himself. By facilitating the exercise himself, he would have made certain that the kind of classroom dynamic he was working to create was preserved.
In a work environment, people are already more deflated and defeated, and more easily accept when their ideas are shot down. Not so in an undergraduate classroom--or really, in any environment in which inquiry and free-exchange of thought is supposed to be valued. Closing off possibility breeds resistance because people feel their ideas are not understood or valued. I can tell you that that is where I was during parts of the activity, and though I have been accused by students (education majors, who had their own reasons for resistance to my children's literature course) of "needing to learn that mine was not the only valid opinion," I am very careful to let literature and composition students give their interpretations, and to respond to them in some way.
The other major flaw in how the activity was facilitated is that although participants were instructed to put terms into groups according to which were similar, the grouping was not exploited at all. It's a related problem, really. Instead of shutting people down, the broader categories could be used to shape the game board. So instead of saying that "having an accent" was the same barrier to communication as "culture," "culture" should have been the broad category (placed at the top of the board) under which "having an accent" or "language" or "respect for elders," etc. would fall. So "texting" might be a subset of "communication" rather than being thrown out altogether. The discussion becomes not only more satisfying for all participants, but more comprehensive.
Aside from the problems with its execution, this exercise has great potential as an entry point for discussions of rhetoric, particularly appeal and resistance. The initial question might be the same: what are barriers to communication?
The game might start with the following instructions: "Think of a time when you were reading an article/surfing the internet/browsing Facebook/listening to a speech or a commentary, and something made you want to stop listening. You might have started thinking about counter-arguments rather than focusing on what was being said. Think about how you felt and why. This is resistance. Now, with your group, brainstorm all of the reasons why you or someone else might feel resistant to a particular message, how it was being delivered, or a speaker."
This approach narrows the "barriers to communication" somewhat, rooting it in a particular experience. This might be good because it creates immediacy. But it might be bad because it asks students to remember being irritated, and this might not be the best way to get started. It would depend on the class dynamic and how comfortable the teacher felt with the students.
An alternate scenario might be, "Think of a time when you were having a conversation with someone. After a while, you realized that you were no longer listening to what they were saying. What makes someone stop listening or paying attention in conversation?"
I think I might simply leave it at "barriers to communication" to see what would happen.
The rest of the exercise would remain the same: write each one on a post-it note; group like terms; designate a group leader, and take terms placing the post-it notes on the board. I would recommend to the groups that they look for broad categories first and place them at the top of the board. As more specific barriers to communication were mentioned, they could be categorized. Then, discuss.
As a follow-up, rather than simply reiterating the barriers, we would address how writers anticipate and overcome barriers to communication by considering the rhetorical situation and appeals. When a writer anticipates a barrier, ignoring the barrier is an option, but not the best strategy, especially for a writer without authority (and all writers start out lacking authority). So strategies for overcoming a perceived barrier to communication (which we're going to call resistance) include neutralizing the resistance in some way--by citing authorities that the resistant audience will accept, perhaps--or addressing the barriers directly, using the perceived communication barrier ("I may sound like your mom, but..."), explaining it ("Our views are different because they are shaped by our experience. Let me tell you where I'm coming from so that you can relate to my perspective, and realize why you are different."), or proposing common ground ("We have differences, but the similarities are what matter.") I would likely want to assign a reading that did address difference directly--something like "Serving the Purpose of Education" by Leona Okakok (Harvard Educational Review 1989).
Another possibility would be to prepare a series of mini-prompts with scenarios: "You are explaining X to someone who thinks Y." "You are explaining your reasons for wanting to break curfew to a parent." "You are explaining why a friend who hates fantasy should read Harry Potter." Etc. Then, have the students either 1) brainstorm ways to convince that particular resistant audience, or 2) write a short paragraph that attempts to overcome resistance. The prompts might be more or less political or socially relevant, but "Explaining to an white Evangelical Protestant male from Texas why he should support Gay Marriage" just opens up potential for stereotypes, so the situations would have to be extremely well-fleshed out in order to avoid bigotry. I would stick to scenarios that were more or less neutral, like the Harry Potter example, or universals, like parent-child dynamics. Another good one might be "Convince a die-hard Windows user of the superiority of Mac OS," but that could also get heated...
Anyway, the point of the exercise is twofold--to demystify, and to get the conversation started. Also, there may not be enough "fun" competition in the undergraduate classroom. Group activities often feel stale and forced, or devolve into opportunities to socialize. I think the "Last Group Standing" activity has the added potential to increase students' comfort level with each other, and with the active role that they play in the course.
I decided to take this workshop for a couple of basic reasons. Once a week (or less often, if we're lucky), we have "Huddles"--meetings with the whole group, which includes both groups of trainers, people who design online training, administrative support, and directors. Unfortunately, because our main director is on the "soft skills" side of things, the emphasis tends to be on things that really don't concern the tech trainers, which is irritating, and frequently, there are unexplained references to things taught by the soft skills people. So, for example, different members of the department were being referred to as "dove" or "peacock" in order to explain certain traits that the exhibited. Eventually, I learned that the birds were representative of communication styles as taught in the "Interpersonal Communication" class, so I signed up for the 3-hour class (which our director has since made mandatory).
On the other hand, communication is sort of what I do. For years, I taught composition and rhetoric, until I had a pretty good command of key rhetorical concepts like "appeal" and "resistance." Audience has been an interest of mine since long before graduate school--specifically, the ways in which fiction authors place their readers in certain roles using narrative clues like direct address. One of the things I want to return to is audience engagement by way of open-ended questions or lack of resolution in fictional narratives. I am pretty adept at written communication. So on the one hand, a class on "Interpersonal Communication" simply provides a new vocabulary to discuss something that already interests me.
Finally, I am painfully introspective and enjoy considering categories. So personality types and communication types are a lot of fun--as long as they don't result in typing and stereotyping. I can "own" the INFP label that Meyers-Briggs assigns, but if people are given advice on how to circumvent my most "peacock" tendencies, or if I stand to be brushed aside in meetings because I'm a "peacock" (thing "persuader"--not my term--rather than flashy and arrogant, though that implication is impossible to avoid), then I have a problem with the categories. But figuring that I could learn something useful, I signed up.
I see immediate applications for personality types and communication styles in undergraduate education, as I do believe that raising--and shaping--self-awareness in students is a valuable part of humanities education, but more on that later. Right now, I want to focus on one particular activity, which we learned as a group when an outside trainer came last July to teach us how to be better facilitators (not really something that was useful for tech trainers, who simply show-and-tell). It is called "Last Man Standing"--though shouldn't it be "Last Person Standing," or "Last Group Standing"?
In the context of the particular class, we were asked about barriers to communication. Each table (a group of 3 or 4) was asked to brainstorm as many possible barriers to communication as they could, writing each one on a post-it note. When the time (about 4-6 minutes) was up, we were asked to arrange our post-its into groups. Then, each group picked a representative to go to the front of the class and take turns placing a post-it on the board. Duplicates were not permitted, so if one team had "technology," another team could not get credit for having "technology" as well--or a term that was judged as too close to "technology," eg. "technophobia" or "technological innovation." As the game progressed, team after team will run out of unique contributions, and the game is over when one team is left standing with additional unique ideas.
It wasn't particularly well-executed in this workshop for a number of reasons. First, our instructor (and my co-worker), who tends to be a bit too self-conscious in spite of the fact that he is basically as competent as anyone else, called in another trainer, who designed the course, to be the "judge" and determine whether the particular post-it term was permissible or whether it had already been used. As she is a very "inside the box," more-restrictive-than-literal-interpretation kind of person, she wound up overturning more possibilities than she should have, closing down rather than opening up the discussion in a number of ways. For example, the facilitator could not see how "politics" could be a barrier to communication, and interpreted "having an accent" as being indistinguishable from "culture." Although he didn't think about it--and possibly others didn't either--he rather compromised his own credibility as an instructor by bringing her in as an "expert" rather than facilitating the exercise himself. By facilitating the exercise himself, he would have made certain that the kind of classroom dynamic he was working to create was preserved.
In a work environment, people are already more deflated and defeated, and more easily accept when their ideas are shot down. Not so in an undergraduate classroom--or really, in any environment in which inquiry and free-exchange of thought is supposed to be valued. Closing off possibility breeds resistance because people feel their ideas are not understood or valued. I can tell you that that is where I was during parts of the activity, and though I have been accused by students (education majors, who had their own reasons for resistance to my children's literature course) of "needing to learn that mine was not the only valid opinion," I am very careful to let literature and composition students give their interpretations, and to respond to them in some way.
The other major flaw in how the activity was facilitated is that although participants were instructed to put terms into groups according to which were similar, the grouping was not exploited at all. It's a related problem, really. Instead of shutting people down, the broader categories could be used to shape the game board. So instead of saying that "having an accent" was the same barrier to communication as "culture," "culture" should have been the broad category (placed at the top of the board) under which "having an accent" or "language" or "respect for elders," etc. would fall. So "texting" might be a subset of "communication" rather than being thrown out altogether. The discussion becomes not only more satisfying for all participants, but more comprehensive.
Aside from the problems with its execution, this exercise has great potential as an entry point for discussions of rhetoric, particularly appeal and resistance. The initial question might be the same: what are barriers to communication?
The game might start with the following instructions: "Think of a time when you were reading an article/surfing the internet/browsing Facebook/listening to a speech or a commentary, and something made you want to stop listening. You might have started thinking about counter-arguments rather than focusing on what was being said. Think about how you felt and why. This is resistance. Now, with your group, brainstorm all of the reasons why you or someone else might feel resistant to a particular message, how it was being delivered, or a speaker."
This approach narrows the "barriers to communication" somewhat, rooting it in a particular experience. This might be good because it creates immediacy. But it might be bad because it asks students to remember being irritated, and this might not be the best way to get started. It would depend on the class dynamic and how comfortable the teacher felt with the students.
An alternate scenario might be, "Think of a time when you were having a conversation with someone. After a while, you realized that you were no longer listening to what they were saying. What makes someone stop listening or paying attention in conversation?"
I think I might simply leave it at "barriers to communication" to see what would happen.
The rest of the exercise would remain the same: write each one on a post-it note; group like terms; designate a group leader, and take terms placing the post-it notes on the board. I would recommend to the groups that they look for broad categories first and place them at the top of the board. As more specific barriers to communication were mentioned, they could be categorized. Then, discuss.
As a follow-up, rather than simply reiterating the barriers, we would address how writers anticipate and overcome barriers to communication by considering the rhetorical situation and appeals. When a writer anticipates a barrier, ignoring the barrier is an option, but not the best strategy, especially for a writer without authority (and all writers start out lacking authority). So strategies for overcoming a perceived barrier to communication (which we're going to call resistance) include neutralizing the resistance in some way--by citing authorities that the resistant audience will accept, perhaps--or addressing the barriers directly, using the perceived communication barrier ("I may sound like your mom, but..."), explaining it ("Our views are different because they are shaped by our experience. Let me tell you where I'm coming from so that you can relate to my perspective, and realize why you are different."), or proposing common ground ("We have differences, but the similarities are what matter.") I would likely want to assign a reading that did address difference directly--something like "Serving the Purpose of Education" by Leona Okakok (Harvard Educational Review 1989).
Another possibility would be to prepare a series of mini-prompts with scenarios: "You are explaining X to someone who thinks Y." "You are explaining your reasons for wanting to break curfew to a parent." "You are explaining why a friend who hates fantasy should read Harry Potter." Etc. Then, have the students either 1) brainstorm ways to convince that particular resistant audience, or 2) write a short paragraph that attempts to overcome resistance. The prompts might be more or less political or socially relevant, but "Explaining to an white Evangelical Protestant male from Texas why he should support Gay Marriage" just opens up potential for stereotypes, so the situations would have to be extremely well-fleshed out in order to avoid bigotry. I would stick to scenarios that were more or less neutral, like the Harry Potter example, or universals, like parent-child dynamics. Another good one might be "Convince a die-hard Windows user of the superiority of Mac OS," but that could also get heated...
Anyway, the point of the exercise is twofold--to demystify, and to get the conversation started. Also, there may not be enough "fun" competition in the undergraduate classroom. Group activities often feel stale and forced, or devolve into opportunities to socialize. I think the "Last Group Standing" activity has the added potential to increase students' comfort level with each other, and with the active role that they play in the course.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
"Ways of Seeing" vs. "Ways of Doing"
I'm not sure this is an insight, necessarily. But as I think about what Training has to offer to Teaching, I find myself thinking about how I am using the two terms. The distinction is one that feels a bit arbitrary to me, because I feel like what I am doing now is simply a subset of teaching rather than a different thing altogether.
So what am I doing?
Right now, after 10+ years as a graduate student and postdoc, teaching between 1 and 3 sections of composition and literature courses to undergraduates at an R1 university, I find myself at the same university, teaching technology courses to staff. See? Teaching. It's impossible to get around it. When we talk about what we do in terms of mission/vision statements, it is always "training." What do we do? We train. But when we talk about what we actually are doing when we're in the classroom, it's always teaching. Where is Mary right now? Oh, she's teaching. She's actually teaching HTML. I don't teach HTML. I teach Microsoft Word (3 skill levels), Outlook (2 skill levels), PowerPoint (1 skill level), and Adobe Acrobat Pro (1 skill level). And the kitchen sink, for anyone who's counting. It's a far cry from "Composition and Rhetoric" and "Introduction to Literature"!
And how is it different, you might ask?
In grad school, when we talked about teaching, it was usually to define our role as teachers--our "classroom personae." We discussed different types of assignments--ways of "decentering the classroom," of "avoiding the banking model" (which I have discussed before, elsewhere), of promoting inquiry. We were excited about using technology to create community and to get students engaged with the material. We learned that it was not actually okay to be an expert in the classroom, and that students should be participants in their own student-centered learning, which meant creating group assignments and other assignments that allowed for investigation and critical thinking. At least, theoretically. My most successful experiment in decentering, encouraging active learning, and promoting inquiry involved student blogging. Hmmm. Go figure.
In technology training, on the one hand, we have a ready-made, hands-on, participatory situation. Each participant is in front of a computer. The are following along with the instructor, trying out the strategies that I introduce, and completing activities either on their own or as I show them on the projector. On the other hand, though "active learning" is a term that's all over training and professional development literature, I don't see what I'm doing as promoting active learning. They follow my lead. They repeat a model. If we're lucky, they remember something. If not, they have the book. Retention really only happens when there is something that registers as the answer to a problem or something that will be particularly useful in their own job contexts. As each of their contexts is unique, and as my experience with using the programs as support staff would do is limited, they supply the contexts and make the connections. I am largely unable to do that at this point.
At root, this is the banking model, hands on or not. I give them a skill (not knowledge--skill), and they give it back by showing that they know how to do it. Transference is big--how do we know that what they have learned in this 6-hour class will transfer back to the workplace? Well, we don't. And we have different skill levels coming in, changing job duties, and many repeat customers (university-affiliated staff--or their departments--don't have to pay) who come back to learn things that they didn't use after the first class, or that they didn't remember. They don't resent it, which is good. (Or most don't.) It is useful in a way that a writing or literature class seldom is, and so most participants are happy with what they can get out of the classes.
At the same time, I am very much expected to be an expert. I am not an expert. If I am an expert in anything, it is not in Microsoft Office. I would say that I'm getting there--certainly my comfort level is increasing. But I don't know the ins and outs of the programs--in part because I don't use them for any real-world applications. I am learning software for the sake of learning and teaching software. Hmmm. It actually feels a bit disingenuous--much more phony than teaching writing, which I definitely practice. I am, however, expected to be an expert. "Let's learn together" simply doesn't cut it here. "Let's try it out" is a little bit better, but there's definitely a bit of skepticism when I can't immediately answer the question, "What does this button do?" So having been taught absolutely not to lecture, and that the expert persona was rarely if ever the most effective way to teach, I am, in fact, having to lecture. I am, in fact, filling the role of an expert. (No, I'm actually not.)
I worry about this. A lot. Because this is not my preferred method of instruction. I like to be a co-collaborator and journey with my students. And being forced to seem the expert makes me feel completely incompetent, which is how some of my students (if not all, or even most) perceive me. And I don't want to learn this new mode at the expense of everything I have ever known about teaching.
So what does the training model offer?
There are some things that do transfer, but they are small things, practical things, approaches, methods, activities. But they exist within the sphere of training. Part of me worries about whether that crossover will be viewed askance by teachers in higher education. As universities are wondering what their roles will be in the changing perception of education, worrying about things like "customer service" and "utilitarian" models of education, I am coming from exactly that place. It could be that my insights will lend some rejuvenation and a sense of relevance, but I think it is equally likely that they will be dismissed as coming from exactly that threatening place. We do not want teaching to become training.
And what about the title of the post?
I return to the difference between teaching and training--particularly humanities teaching, which is where my interest lies. In the humanities, we teach because we are interested in perceptions--in "ways of seeing." We teach to change perceptions, or raise awareness of perceptions, or to promote new perceptions. I am thinking primarily of English and History, but the same could be said of Anthropology and Sociology, and perhaps even the soft side of Psychology. Of course, the groupings change, and I am aware that most of the above would/could be considered Social Sciences rather than, strictly speaking, Humanities. But perception is still key. (Some would, no doubt, correct or add that we are interested in "ways of knowing." I'll leave that possibility for now.) By contrast, training is about "ways of doing." It is practical. Applied. Hands-on. At least, that's the goal. It is the "how"--not the "why" or even the "what." (Well, it's a little bit of the "why," just differently... More the "what for?" than the "why?")
I'm afraid that by melding the "ways of doing" with the "ways of seeing," I will mark myself as irrevocably practical and applied. That my way of introducing relevance by way of training techniques, knowledge, and practices will be rejected because it is the Other against which, at this moment, higher education is poised. I stand to put a utilitarian spin on courses that are already marked as "service" courses, and I understand the politics of that kind of move, even if it is not my intent. And for a discipline that is struggling between being "unacknowledged legislators" and "mak[ing] nothing happen," it might not be the right moment for my insights.
So what am I doing?
Right now, after 10+ years as a graduate student and postdoc, teaching between 1 and 3 sections of composition and literature courses to undergraduates at an R1 university, I find myself at the same university, teaching technology courses to staff. See? Teaching. It's impossible to get around it. When we talk about what we do in terms of mission/vision statements, it is always "training." What do we do? We train. But when we talk about what we actually are doing when we're in the classroom, it's always teaching. Where is Mary right now? Oh, she's teaching. She's actually teaching HTML. I don't teach HTML. I teach Microsoft Word (3 skill levels), Outlook (2 skill levels), PowerPoint (1 skill level), and Adobe Acrobat Pro (1 skill level). And the kitchen sink, for anyone who's counting. It's a far cry from "Composition and Rhetoric" and "Introduction to Literature"!
And how is it different, you might ask?
In grad school, when we talked about teaching, it was usually to define our role as teachers--our "classroom personae." We discussed different types of assignments--ways of "decentering the classroom," of "avoiding the banking model" (which I have discussed before, elsewhere), of promoting inquiry. We were excited about using technology to create community and to get students engaged with the material. We learned that it was not actually okay to be an expert in the classroom, and that students should be participants in their own student-centered learning, which meant creating group assignments and other assignments that allowed for investigation and critical thinking. At least, theoretically. My most successful experiment in decentering, encouraging active learning, and promoting inquiry involved student blogging. Hmmm. Go figure.
In technology training, on the one hand, we have a ready-made, hands-on, participatory situation. Each participant is in front of a computer. The are following along with the instructor, trying out the strategies that I introduce, and completing activities either on their own or as I show them on the projector. On the other hand, though "active learning" is a term that's all over training and professional development literature, I don't see what I'm doing as promoting active learning. They follow my lead. They repeat a model. If we're lucky, they remember something. If not, they have the book. Retention really only happens when there is something that registers as the answer to a problem or something that will be particularly useful in their own job contexts. As each of their contexts is unique, and as my experience with using the programs as support staff would do is limited, they supply the contexts and make the connections. I am largely unable to do that at this point.
At root, this is the banking model, hands on or not. I give them a skill (not knowledge--skill), and they give it back by showing that they know how to do it. Transference is big--how do we know that what they have learned in this 6-hour class will transfer back to the workplace? Well, we don't. And we have different skill levels coming in, changing job duties, and many repeat customers (university-affiliated staff--or their departments--don't have to pay) who come back to learn things that they didn't use after the first class, or that they didn't remember. They don't resent it, which is good. (Or most don't.) It is useful in a way that a writing or literature class seldom is, and so most participants are happy with what they can get out of the classes.
At the same time, I am very much expected to be an expert. I am not an expert. If I am an expert in anything, it is not in Microsoft Office. I would say that I'm getting there--certainly my comfort level is increasing. But I don't know the ins and outs of the programs--in part because I don't use them for any real-world applications. I am learning software for the sake of learning and teaching software. Hmmm. It actually feels a bit disingenuous--much more phony than teaching writing, which I definitely practice. I am, however, expected to be an expert. "Let's learn together" simply doesn't cut it here. "Let's try it out" is a little bit better, but there's definitely a bit of skepticism when I can't immediately answer the question, "What does this button do?" So having been taught absolutely not to lecture, and that the expert persona was rarely if ever the most effective way to teach, I am, in fact, having to lecture. I am, in fact, filling the role of an expert. (No, I'm actually not.)
I worry about this. A lot. Because this is not my preferred method of instruction. I like to be a co-collaborator and journey with my students. And being forced to seem the expert makes me feel completely incompetent, which is how some of my students (if not all, or even most) perceive me. And I don't want to learn this new mode at the expense of everything I have ever known about teaching.
So what does the training model offer?
There are some things that do transfer, but they are small things, practical things, approaches, methods, activities. But they exist within the sphere of training. Part of me worries about whether that crossover will be viewed askance by teachers in higher education. As universities are wondering what their roles will be in the changing perception of education, worrying about things like "customer service" and "utilitarian" models of education, I am coming from exactly that place. It could be that my insights will lend some rejuvenation and a sense of relevance, but I think it is equally likely that they will be dismissed as coming from exactly that threatening place. We do not want teaching to become training.
And what about the title of the post?
I return to the difference between teaching and training--particularly humanities teaching, which is where my interest lies. In the humanities, we teach because we are interested in perceptions--in "ways of seeing." We teach to change perceptions, or raise awareness of perceptions, or to promote new perceptions. I am thinking primarily of English and History, but the same could be said of Anthropology and Sociology, and perhaps even the soft side of Psychology. Of course, the groupings change, and I am aware that most of the above would/could be considered Social Sciences rather than, strictly speaking, Humanities. But perception is still key. (Some would, no doubt, correct or add that we are interested in "ways of knowing." I'll leave that possibility for now.) By contrast, training is about "ways of doing." It is practical. Applied. Hands-on. At least, that's the goal. It is the "how"--not the "why" or even the "what." (Well, it's a little bit of the "why," just differently... More the "what for?" than the "why?")
I'm afraid that by melding the "ways of doing" with the "ways of seeing," I will mark myself as irrevocably practical and applied. That my way of introducing relevance by way of training techniques, knowledge, and practices will be rejected because it is the Other against which, at this moment, higher education is poised. I stand to put a utilitarian spin on courses that are already marked as "service" courses, and I understand the politics of that kind of move, even if it is not my intent. And for a discipline that is struggling between being "unacknowledged legislators" and "mak[ing] nothing happen," it might not be the right moment for my insights.
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