Switching to New LMS Platform

UCF is switching from Blackboard to Canvas, for a variety of reasons. Though the change entails a lot of work for those of us whose courses were deeply embedded in Blackboard's Learning Management System (LMS), I am happy to do the necessary work because of the benefit I see in the new program. Just as the expectancy-value theory of motivation predicts, because I value tools that improve my teaching and because I see the utility of the new LMS, I am highly motivated to invest my time in learning to use Canvas.

And I really am. It's amazingly intuitive to use, and it gives my a bunch of ways to connect to my students via various social networks and apps, which is right up my alley. I'm looking forward to seeing how it works out in real life, as my first class using it starts tonight!

Ah, December

 It's that time of year, the time of the year when papers are turned in at universities across the county as the fall semester comes to an end. Inevitably, I have to deal with some form of cheating or plagiarism in my classes. This fall is no different. Note to students: Different fonts in your paper send off warning bells in your professor's mind. You don't want those bells to sound because then we will be transformed into Sherlock Holmes, our magnifying glass in hand (i.e., the zoom button on the keyboard and/or our reading glasses), our cloak wrapped around our shoulders (a sweater works well too at this time of year), and our notebooks (i.e., the Internet) out as we search for clues. 

Interestingly, the Central Florida Future, in its  December 3, 2012 edition, noted that three professors at UCF were caught plagiarizing too. The news made the front page of the paper, with a chart from the plagiarism.org website detailing the different types of plagiarism, including:

1. Clone: Turning in someone else's work as your own.
2. CTRL-C: Copying significant portions of text from a single source without alterations.
3. Find-Replace: Changing key words and phrases but retaining the essential content of the source.
4. Remix: Paraphrasing multiple sources, making them fit together.
5. Recycle: Borrows generously from one's own previously written work without citation.
   
6. Hybrid:  Combines correctly cited sources with copied passages without citation.

--Taken from Plagiarism.org

I've been fortunate to not have yet dealt with case #1 above. Asking students to write assignments containing examples from their personal/professional lives to support their points helps minimize the risk of "clone" (cue Star Wars music) plagiarism. The others, though, are more frequently seen in my experience, particularly cutting and pasting from online articles. (Wikipedia is a favorite, even with my graduate students.)

My advice is to refrain from using CTRL-C. Step away from the keyboard! Sit with pen and paper in hand and put what you are reading into your own words. And THEN don't forget to include the citation. Because even a perfectly paraphrased summary of another's ideas must have a citation to acknowledge where the ideas originated.

Some more advice: Write down your own original ideas. They may seem superficial to you or not well-developed, but I'd much prefer to read what the author really thinks rather than read some mishmash of other's ideas mixed in with their own. The latter paper ends up sounding quite schizophrenic, with occasionally lapses into brilliant insight followed by an awkward transition before another pearl of wisdom.

How does this all fit into our blog topic of conceptual change? It's that I'm struggling with how to change students' perceptions about the nature of plagiarism and its consequences. How can I teach my students about plagiarism in such a way that they really understand its severity and commit to taking the harder road of writing their real thoughts on paper?

I have some tricks up my sleeve for next semester. I will report if they worked to change students' beliefs about cheating and plagiarism.

Until then, I hope you enjoy the other thing that happens every December. 
Happy Holidays everyone! 

15 Years Later

It's 15 years since I started my doctoral program (really??? where did the time go?), and I am still as fascinated with conceptual change as ever. I'm particularly interested in how the beliefs we hold frame our world and the conditions that precipitate conceptual and belief shifts so that the world is perceived in new ways. For example, an acquaintance of mine has labored under the assumption that she would finish her doctorate "some day" since she does not have any time in her busy professional life (full-time career) or personal life (wife and mom of two young children) to add anything else to her schedule. Interestingly, though, with the imminent retirement of her major professor, she now perceives time differently, and she now sees a way to make time to work on finishing her dissertation. It's not just a case of being more motivated now, though that does have an influence, it's that she actually perceives her schedule and availability differently now. This happens to me--in inconsequential and important situations alike--fairly frequently (I may be a bit of an anomaly here, since I've gone through many major conceptual shifts, probably worthy of 4 lifetimes in one.....)

One of the more major shifts in my life was changing my beliefs about whether I wanted children. From a very young age, I knew that I didn't want to have kids. I told everyone--even my future spouse. And it was't hormones that made me change my mind (at least I don't think so). It was just a different way of seeing the world that happened due to various influences occurring in my life at the time. Plus I had a dream, and in the dream, I saw myself having a child, and it seemed right somehow. That, plus other influences in my life at the time (great marriage, good friends, lots of love I wanted to share) led me to reconsider 30 or so years of thinking to make room for the possibility of redefining who I was. Ten years later, I am grateful for this shift and my two young boys who fill my life with so much unanticipated joy.

For Those Thinking About Opening a Charter School....

This article nails it: http://charterinsights.blogspot.com/2009/11/its-no-fun-being-charter-school-leader.html

Certainly, starting a charter school has been much, more more difficult than I anticipated, particularly for the reasons mentioned above. Still, it is a labor of love, similar to parenting. You can't enter into either thinking about what you will get from them; rather, one must have a service orientation:: What can I give to this situation? Unfortunately, so many of us are overworked, overtired, and overstressed that it feels as if we don't have that much to give. Our charter school board, for instance, is having a difficult time recruiting folks to serve with us. Many couples are delaying parenthood and choosing to have less children when they do decide to start having kids. It's an odd world. I am not sure if it's because we are all just more selfish (the "me" generation hypothesis), or just overstressed and inundated with knowledge/technology, or if there is just too much complexity in our world where peace is rare and moments of quiet far too fleeting.

Do School Principals Matter?

When I first started teaching, I didn't pay much attention to my school principal. He was an older man, kind yet strict, and I mostly just wanted him to leave me alone so that I could teach. The following year, I moved to a different school, one that was getting a brand new principal. My first impression of her was that she was a hard woman, inflexible and demanding. I wasn't alone in my assessment, and many teachers were unhappy with her leadership. In retrospect, many years later, I find this unfair as she really did push us to do different, creative things that focused on student learning. I think her personality, though, got in the way, and she neglected to court us or get us to see things from her perspective. She was just the boss, kind of intimidating, and we did whatever we could to avoid being noticed by her. She didn't stay long--the atmosphere was just too hostile to nurture a good fit--and soon we had her opposite--a principal who stood on his head the first day of classes (literally) as students filed into the school. Kids loved him. Teachers loved him. We had so much freedom to do whatever we wanted to do. We tried some really innovative things under his loose guidance. For instance, we instituted "mini-courses" where students took two weeks off from classes in the spring to pick a course of their own choosing. It was a tremendously successful experience for teachers and students alike. I was able to take kids from multiple grades hiking and rock climbing each day, without a regular schedule to bind us. Thus, I came to believe a good leader had a hands-off approach, was kind, and trusted his teachers.

And then, many years later, I founded my own school. And I realized how critical the role of the school leader was. A school leader is essential for ensuring the efficient and safe running of the school, so that teachers and students can focus on learning. Again, it highlights another example of conceptual change, just by being forced by the situation to see things from a different perspective. I wonder if we ought to use this "perspective change" more deliberately. I am sure it's being done in some workshops somewhere, but I don't see it happening on a regular basis. However, if teachers were made to walk a mile in the principal's shoes, and the principal had to go back in the classroom for a day to teach all day, what changes might result?

Back to the hands-off, "fun" principal--in retrospect, I am not sure he was better for the school than the previous principal, except in cultivating a positive school culture (not an unimportant goal). However, I am sure many of us were less rigorous in our approach to teaching than under the prior principal. I am reminded of my undergraduate years. I attended New College in Florida, a liberal arts school with no grades. Yet, for all its freedom, it's very hard to graduate there. The workload is intense, and only those gifted with high self-regulation and motivation seem to thrive there. The attrition rate is atrocious (it was 60% when I attended). Yet it was perfect for me because I thrive under the hands-off approach. I wonder at the disservice done to those who needed more scaffolding, the many, many dropouts who are now doing odd jobs or who found a better fit at a more traditional school. I guess that's why the theories of niche picking resonate so strongly with me. I think much of good career counseling involves helping the client know themselves enough to know in which kinds of environments they are likely to be most successful. It's a shame that this often takes place at the undergraduate level, where it's often difficult and costly to change one's direction. I'd love to see more of this done at the middle school level. But I digress. My main point is that now I know that school principals matter, really matter, to the successful functioning of a school, and that deliberate exercises involving perspective change may help to increase positive, supportive relationships in an organization (the latter is in need of experimental testing however!).

Theories and Practice

I was reading about the Love and Logic program of parenting and classroom management. The program is based on a developmentally-appropriate perspective of providing children with reasonable, limited choices instead of trying to control their behavior with strict directives. As I was reflecting on the program, I realized that this is what our elementary education majors need--a clear plan that can be implemented in the classroom tomorrow. I am not writing this to talk about the merits of Love and Logic, though I do like their system. Rather, I am questioning our focus in education to start with theory first, in a very deductive manner. Heck, I like that approach--theory appeals to me. That's why I went and got my doctorate. My general thinking, shared by my colleagues, is that teachers must understand the theoretical frameworks that underlie teaching and learning situations so that they can make appropriate, reflective decisions in the classroom.

But what if we're wrong?

What if we should instead start with concrete suggestions for practice. For instance, we could teach them three different systems of classroom management, from three different epistemological perspectives, and then we could let them choose what works best for them. As long as all three are research-based, I don't see the harm in this, as long as they understand the tradeoffs inherent in each approach. The benefit is that they have something specific and concrete to use in their classroom. It's a very practical approach. We could do the same with math, reading, etc.

But what about the theories? Aren't they still important?

Yes, definitely. But I don't think they really matter to teachers until they have faced some complex, problematic situations that require more sophisticated thought. Truly, the first year of teaching is often about survival. What if we reserved our focused teaching of theories of learning, instruction, and child development for the internship year and graduate school years? I find my graduate level child development class to be much more fruitful than the one I teach for undergrads because most of my graduate students are practicing teachers. They really find the theories useful--they seem hungry for them, and they often engender heated debate as well as outright changes in teaching style.

My two cents for the day. What do you all think?

Temple Grandin

Not sure if we should focus on strengthening kids' weaknesses or capitalizing on their strengths. The facile answer is to do both, but there's a fundamental difference between these two approaches. I am thinking of Temple Grandin here. There are some weaknesses that cannot be "corrected" in us--many, I'd dare say. Do we waste time trying to teach a kid with ADHD to improve his organizational skills, or do we just buy him a smart phone and program a series of daily text alarms to help him remember things?

It's a hard question, and maybe it depends upon the weak area. If it's not a real disability, just a weak muscle, then sure, exercise and strengthen it. (For instance, I was never an athlete and couldn't run two blocks without getting winded, but with years of practice, I've become a competent runner able to complete a half-marathon in reasonable time.) But for kids with disabilities, how much time is wasted trying to correct something that is basically not correctable? Look at the case histories of kids with ADHD or Asperger's--their report cards show the same thing: "poor handwriting, inappropriate social functioning, needs improvement with organizational skills." We spend years telling these kids all the things they are doing wrong. What would it look like if we focused almost exclusively on what they did well, while providing some kind of support for overcoming the most egregious aspects of their disability? For instance, no one could make Temple Grandin develop emotional empathy for others, but they could teach her a specific set of rules for social interaction to follow even if she didn't really "get" them. She was finally liberated from her isolation when she was allowed to nurture her love of animals and run with this. She transformed the nature of animal husbandry in this country, making it a much more humane process for animals.

I am concerned that we spend too much of time as teachers and parents trying to make our students more similar to each other rather than deeply investing in their uniqueness and fostering it.