“I’ve been studying the faculty career and university administration and thinking about how a network perspective can help us think about the formal and informal relationships in professional settings and how resources are exchanged, tenure decisions are made, funds are allocated, and all these different formal things that happen in higher education that, like everywhere else, often happen through informal relationships and exchanges,” Pifer says.

The study
The study combined online social network surveys and qualitative interviews to explore faculty members’ perceptions and behaviors within the context of their departments. The online survey asked tenured and tenure-track faculty in two departments (a business department and a social behavioral sciences department at the same institution) to indicate which colleagues they interacted with in the department for the following purposes: teaching, research, and service activities; departmental policies and politics; institutional policies and politics; disciplinary policies and politics; and general support and friendship. She then interviewed each participant about their individual experiences with networks within the department.

Findings
Pifer found that the departments had much in common. Both were very well regarded in their disciplines and had a “highly competitive but highly supportive culture.” She also found that the faculty in these departments were highly engaged in forming positive relationships within their departments. “Faculty members are really interacting a lot with colleagues in their local department from day to day and over the course of their careers, and for all of those different types of relationship and functions that I was asking people to think about, they indicated that by and large they were highly involved in relationships with their fellow faculty members for collaborative purposes. That was often driven by their own career goals. That’s one thing that jumped out at me right away—there are lots of positive side effects of these relationships,” Pifer says. “By and large people were very deliberate about career success, research productivity, earning tenure, being effective administrators within their departments, and exchanging resources through those ties.”

Pifer found that senior faculty were aware of the benefits they gained from interactions with colleagues and were deliberate about being supportive of junior colleagues by providing resources, which Pifer defines broadly as to include things such as funding, advice, support, friendship, collaboration, teaching feedback, and access to people in other networks. Senior faculty in the study continued to rely on each other throughout their careers. “We like what we do because there are always opportunities for growth, development, and change. As we find ourselves in the role of assistant dean, director of a research center, or serving as department chair, we rely on our colleagues to help us understand those roles,” Pifer says.

Networks provide a means for formal and informal exchange of resources. For example, a formal exchange might be a classroom evaluation of teaching. Informal exchanges can include things such as a supportive friendship. “I had people say things such as, ‘She and I are really good friends, and that’s been meaningful to me because last semester I had a really rough day in the classroom. She took me out, we had a glass of wine, and she gave me some really good advice, and that really helped me pull through.’ In general, we’re thinking about any career-related resources that help faculty members understand their jobs, to be successful and satisfied in their work, but specifically it’s all these incidental tasks that are exchanged through these friendships, through these collegial relationships.”

While study participants had a clear understanding of their relationships within the department, they were uncomfortable thinking about those relationships in terms of “strategic networking.” “Faculty members are very bright, very capable people,” Pifer says. They are pretty methodical about the way they get things done and manage their careers and their lives. I would show them a roster of their colleagues or a map of their network and they would instantly say things like, ‘He has access to a lot of grant money, but I don’t want to have to be his underling. We’re friendly, but I don’t want to collaborate with him.’ Or ‘Oh, that reminds me, I need to take her out to lunch. She’s the chair of the tenure committee, and I haven’t introduced myself to her yet.’

“Most people were very comfortable conceptualizing their relationships in this way, but they were much less comfortable articulating that strategic behavior, self-serving behavior, networking behavior. I think that makes sense when we stop to think about it because I think we still like to think of higher education faculty as very independent and motivated, where we’re all supportive, bright people capable of earning success based on merit alone. I don’t think that’s an accurate perception of the faculty career today. Yes, of course, that matters, but what also matters is the access that people have to the opportunities and resources through their relationships.”

Pifer found that relationships within departmental networks are complex and are often based on professional similarities such as methodological preferences or research interests or on personal similarities such as gender, marital status, race, or sexual orientation.

“I did see that faculty are reaching out to people who think they are similar to themselves, but I also found that that’s a very complex process that includes professional similarities as well as personal similarities. One of the next big questions is, is there potential that somebody is being unintentionally left out, and if so what do we think about that? What does that mean for equity? What does that mean for career success? Where do we go from there?”

An important consideration is whether everyone within a department has access to a network that can help them in their careers. For example, if there is a lot of networking going on in the locker room in a small department with six men and one woman, what is that woman not being granted access to because of her gender? By considering a networks perspective, departments can begin to understand who may be excluded and why.

“One of the key findings was that departmental culture is sort of the collective communication of the norms, behaviors, and relationships that are common and expected within the department. I also found that the role of the department chair is crucial in both departments. Participants were very satisfied with the department chair in both departments. The chairs were very articulate and intentional about making sure that the faculty members got the resources they needed. I found that when these chairs created a culture of support where expectations were clearly communicated and resources were clearly provided, that seemed to be enough. It was something [the faculty] internalized, and without much prompting from me they would say quite frequently, ‘You know, I really have to thank the department chair for his leadership in this.’ Every person in the network contributes to the culture and the outcomes of that network, but formal leaders and informal leaders absolutely have significant influence on what that looks like,” Pifer says.

Implications
Networks are complex, constantly changing, and cannot be manipulated to suit the vision of an academic leader. However, Pifer recommends that academic leaders and faculty try to understand their networks and address inequities if they exist. “Ask people to think about it. You can formalize it as much or as little as you like. You can go so far as to bring somebody in and do an external assessment, or you can say to the faculty, ‘Before our next faculty meeting I want you all to take a look at our website or a roster of our colleagues and think seriously about your relationships with them according to these three, four, or five purposes.’ Ask faculty members to think about their own needs and their own contributions to others’ career development.

“Using this as a conceptual tool to help people understand that their relationships can be mapped out, we can think about them logically and systematically and we can identify any potential problem,” Pifer says. This is a difficult analysis for a chair to conduct individually through observation, because the complexity of these relationships is not always apparent. Encouraging faculty to map their own networks or guiding a discussion to determine whether some faculty do not have access to resources. Another approach is to at look things such as office allocation, teaching loads, and research productivity to look for factors that might indirectly indicate faculty members’ access to departmental resources.

“Physical space matters. When departments are organized in ways where people have reasons to interact with each other frequently and informally, that can do a lot to support the development of informal relationships that can lead to formal career outcomes,” Pifer says.

As with anything involving highly independent faculty members, a top-down approach to changing behavior is unlikely to succeed, Pifer says. “If you walk into a room full of people, let alone academics, and say, ‘Good news! I’m going to perfect your interpersonal behavior,’ you’re going to be run out of town. So the conclusion is not that we can or even should change behavior, but that we want to understand the difference between preference and personality and unintended inequity or unfair differentiation and access to resources.”

For more on this research see http://etda.libraries.psu.edu/theses/approved/WorldWideIndex/ETD-4994/index.html.

Reprinted from Understand Networks within Academic Departments Academic Leader, 27.5 (2011): 1, 7.

• What are the two greatest difficulties you had taking this course in an online environment?
• What three things surprised you most by taking this course in an online learning environment?
• What three things would you change about this course, assuming it were also taught in an online learning environment?

Despite the small sample size (19), Zuck has gleaned some useful information that has influenced how she teaches the course. (She continues to ask students these questions to get a larger sample and more useful insights.)

Many of the students were first-time online learners, and their comments reflected this. The following themes emerged from the students’ comments:

• Time management is important.
• The course required more work than expected.
• Some students missed being in the classroom.
• Some students wanted more peer interaction.
• Some students felt disconnected.
• The course required commitment and motivation.
• Some students wanted more input from the instructor.
• Some found the course interesting and easy to navigate.

“I was somewhat surprised by their responses. One of the comments that came out pretty strongly was, ‘This is so much more work that I thought it would be,’” Zuck says.

This surprise at the amount of work involved in the course came despite expectations clearly delineated in the syllabus, which included details about threaded discussions and weekly exercises, as well as an explanatory paragraph for each assignment.

Students were very positive about a community-service assignment, but they did struggle to find the time to spend the required 20 hours working with a community partner. Given the frequency of this concern, Zuck has reduced the number of hours students spend in the field to 15.

To help students manage their time better, Zuck has changed the ways she manages assignments. For example, rather than establishing Sunday night assignment deadlines, which are typical in other online courses and can create workload/time management issues for students, Zuck sets deadlines throughout the week to avoid the “Sunday night crunch.”

On larger assignments, Zuck has implemented several milestone deadlines to help keep students on track and provide feedback. “I have found that sometimes my communication or how my students are reading my instructions can create some confusion. The milestones help keep me making sure I give good feedback to students on their work, and it gives them the opportunity to turn in a better paper at the end,” Zuck says.

To improve clarity, Zuck provides a rubric and examples for each assignment and sends each student three feedback emails per week. “I found that with online learning, students really like the rubrics because it’s a way for me to communicate my expectations. It’s in a little bit different format, and when the students get their grades they can very easily see where I mark the points off in each category. Rubrics have really helped me in my communication with the students,” Zuck says.

Self-confidence and motivation were issues for some students in the study. Zuck decided to send weekly inspirational/motivational quotes to the class. “I have had some students email me back and say, ‘Wow! That really made my day!’ It’s a small thing, but at least the students who took this course realize that they may need some positive influence in their world,” Zuck says.

Zuck also asks permission to post exemplary work to serve as examples for others as a way to improve morale and motivate students, and has established an open student forum for students to post and request assistance from other students, as a way to create connections among students. The forum also provides a space for students to share their projects with each other.

Zuck will continue to ask these three questions in future sections of the course and will use the feedback to shape the course. She also will look at other ways to solicit student feedback. “We, as instructors, should look for opportunities throughout the semester to get feedback from students. From an assessment point of view, it can be very valuable,” she says.

Reprinted from Online Classroom (February 2011): 3.

To address this issue, adult learners need to become more aware of how they learn, says Natalie Peeterse, an adjunct English instructor at the University of Montana. She says that instructors can help adult learners become more self-aware by using the following metacognitive scaffolding techniques:

• Build on previous learning — “I think the best way to start off an online course with this type of students is to get them thinking about prior experience,” Peeterse says. “One of the things to do in the course is to move past introductions and get students to recall past learning experiences. For example, you could ask, ‘Can you think of a learning situation in which you excelled? What was that like? Can you give us a specific example of learning something? How did you go about learning it?’”
• Require critical reflection — After students complete their first major assignment, have them discuss what worked for them, what they struggled with, and what help they needed. “I think it’s great to share that with peers because it’s an easy topic to interact about, so they’re more likely to do it. I also think the interaction should be required and graded so students are sure to do it. Critical reflection is a great online discussion activity. Students get a sense of connection and are also able to articulate what they need help with, which is something that I think is a little challenging for the adult learner, but it’s really important that they express that and have that be addressed and also see that other students are struggling with similar problems,” Peeterse says.
• Provide structured feedback — Peeterse recommends posting feedback on the same day every week within 72 hours of the end of each unit. “[Without timely feedback], students are just stuck out there flying blindly until they get something to grab onto. One of the ways to help students build that metacognitive awareness is to give them solid, timely feedback. Adult learners sometimes are not able to self-assess their performance. Gauging the difference between how you feel you performed and how you actually performed is really important. A lot of students are terrified of failing but find that they did really well. Then they have to recalibrate their self-assessment, which is part of the idea behind metacognitive scaffolding. If you can build that self-awareness into the course, if you can build those structures so students can compare and contrast how they feel and think and how they did, they can start to self-regulate and self-correct. That is what you really want students to be doing.”
• Use check-in quizzes — Peeterse recommends creating a predictable structure for an online course, and part of that can be a series of check-in quizzes, yes-no or Likert-scale quizzes that ask students to stop and self-assess once every two weeks. These quizzes can have students rate themselves in terms of how they think they are doing and indicate which concepts they understand and which concepts they are struggling with.
• Monitor students’ participation — Peeterse recommends using a course management system’s early-warning system to monitor student participation in the course. Blackboard, for example, enables instructors to send automated emails to students who do not log in during a specific time. Peeterse uses the early-warning system during the first two weeks of a course. She has the system set up so that if a student has not logged on for five days, he or she receives an automated email. She also has the system set up to notify students who fail to submit the first major assignment.
• Pick up the phone — Automated emails can help, but sometimes there is no substitute for a live conversation, Peeterse says.

Reprinted from Online Classroom, (Feb. 2011): 2, 5.

• Do not respond immediately. Wait two or three days and carefully consider your response.
• Use a professional tone.
• Address the student by name.
• Deal with only the issue brought up in the email.
• Do not address personal matters via email. (If you need to address such issues, use the telephone.)
• Limit your response to two or three lines. (“The more you write, the more ammunition you’re giving them to get angry all over again,” Brown said.)
• Close “Respectfully, [your name].”

Reference
“Effective Communication in Online Learning Environments,” 2010 FIU Online Conference (archived workshop, accessed December 15, 2010, at http://online.fiu.edu/faculty/professionaldevelopment/conference/2010).

Reprinted from Online Classroom (Jan. 2011): 1.

Roadmap to the course
Nameth recommends beginning the course design process with the syllabus—the “roadmap” both for the instructor when designing the course and for students when they take the course. “There is a lot that we do as instructors face to face that perhaps we don’t realize we do and don’t realize its importance. In an online course, particularly in an asynchronous online course, there’s not that real-time feedback or guidance. Because of this, I came to regard my syllabus as a roadmap that really defines the course both for myself and my students,” Nameth says. “As students read through it, particularly before registering for the course, they can really get a sense of what the course will be about.”

To that end, Nameth includes information about the following elements in the syllabus:

• welcome message
• objectives
• assignments
• class norms
• communication methods
• technical requirements
• skills needed to take the course
• course structure
• log in information
• technical support

Having an extensive syllabus is important because from time to time student may not be able to access the course management system. For example, some assignments—such as readings from the textbook or essays—may not require students to work within the course management system. When the syllabus contains detailed information about the assignments, students can continue their progress in the course even when they are temporarily unable to access the course management system.

Nameth lists assignments in the syllabus and in the course management system by week and assignment number (e.g., W1 01 refers to week 1, assignment 1), which makes it easier for students to navigate the course.

What works?
Not everything that works in the face-to-face classroom will work online. Some elements will need to be reworked to fit the medium, and others will require an entirely different approach. “Remind yourself of the purpose of the course—the goals and objectives you set for yourself and the students,” Nameth says.
For example, a discussion activity that you normally do in the face-to-face class may not be suitable to the online format. A substitute may be having students watch a video clip and discuss it in a threaded discussion or write a short essay.

As with the face-to-face environment, once the course is created it will require changes. “I think some people still have the notion that because you’ve taught the course face to face many years it’s easy to [create an online version]. I’ve heard many times, ‘Once I get the lectures recorded and everything uploaded in Blackboard set the way I want it, I won’t really have to work on the course much any more. I won’t have to think about it. It will be easy. This will be a one-time transfer.’ I think that’s definitely a mistake. Just as in the face-to-face environment it takes tweaking. You might need to change your teaching style for a particular group of students. One group may need more scaffolding than another,” Nameth says.

When creating an online course it’s important to have realistic expectations. It would be great to include video clips in each module, but you need to consider the resources required to make that happen and how it will affect the learning experience and the level of support students might needs as a result.

Nameth recommends starting with a simple design and focusing on the learning outcomes and guarding against becoming overly excited about what various technologies can do. She recommends looking at the course from the perspective of the instructor, student, and educational technology expert. Access the course as a student and check to see if the instructions are clear, and try to anticipate what kind of support students might need if you include certain multimedia elements.

“Think about keeping it simple, true to your purpose, your learning objectives, and your enthusiasm for the course. When you put in a technical component, double-check the website. Make sure that it’s still working and easy to navigate. If you embed video, make sure that it can be viewed on a PC and a Mac. I do some things that require a Java update. Can I explain to students how to do that? Having one video in there can lead to hours of questions. Ask yourself, ‘If I were a student what would my questions be? What are the possible problems?’ As the instructor you should be prepared to answer those questions or points students to resources that can answer those questions,” Nameth says.

This is not to suggest that you should avoid using a variety of multimedia elements or tools that require some getting used to. They can be essential course elements. For example, in Nameth’s online pronunciations course, it was necessary for students to be able to record their voices, and one of the biggest problems was students plugging in their microphones incorrectly. The first few times she taught the course, Nameth received three to five emails per week (in two courses of 15 students each) asking for help setting up the microphone. Now, instead having to answer each email, she provides students with a diagram and a video that demonstrates the proper way to install the microphone. “The more experience we have and the more pitfalls we encounter, the better we become as instructors and communicators,” Nameth says.

Excerpted from Online Classroom (Dec. 2010): 1,3.

There are currently about 40 facilitators at Century. Each receives a small stipend for leading faculty members in six two- to two-and-a-half-hour sessions. Participants are eligible for a small stipend as well once they have written and disseminated a report on their project.

Full-time and part-time faculty members are eligible to participate in this program, and in the past 10 years, approximately 200 tenured faculty members have taken part in it. Of those, three-quarters have participated four times or more, estimates Larry Litecky, president of Century College.

“That’s the way we’ve done much of our faculty development, and it has led to a fair amount of experimenting with new approaches,” he says.

2. Organizational Development at Century College
In addition to individual faculty, Century is taking a broader approach to improving student learning. The college is in the midst of developing a collective approach to professional development that will explore department and program strategies such as learning communities, intrusive advising, supplemental instruction, and student success courses—strategies selected from Achieving the Dream, a nationwide initiative aimed at improving the success of students of color, low-income students, and underprepared students.

“In some ways it’s more organizational development than traditional individually based faculty development,” Litecky says. To that end, the college has rewritten department chair and program director position descriptions to focus more on student success and less on some of the routine tasks typically such as scheduling and budgeting.

Reprinted from Kelly R. (2010). Century College Professional Development Strategies. Academic Leader, 26 (10), 8.

Jones divides the class into groups of no more than six. “I want students to feel that they have a commitment to each other to do the work so they can learn together,” Jones says. In addition to building a learning community, Jones wants her students to engage in active learning. “I want students to become engaged in learning so that they own the whole learning process rather than me as the instructor telling them, ‘This is what you are supposed to learn.’ I want to structure the classroom so that students are involved and engaged in active learning.”

To that end, Jones sets up group quizzes so that students have to explain concepts to each other, which research suggests helps learning.

Part of that teaching process is posting comments and reading what other students have posted and critiquing or adding to them. To accomplish this Jones clearly articulates her expectations in the grading rubric. An individual student’s quiz grade is not based solely on the content that the student submits individually but also on whether the student provides constructive feedback to other students. “I start with the grading, which is always the hard part—figuring out how you want to structure the grading so that it matches what I hope to get out of the exercise,” Jones says. One way that Jones helps students meet her expectations is to provide examples of what a well-done finished product looks like.

Not all students pick up on this approach immediately so she sends individual emails to students, reminding them if they haven’t posted to the group discussion board and providing other feedback. “Especially in the first couple of weeks of the semester I spend a lot of time emailing students individually about their comments. If they post a comment and it’s a definition I probably won’t say anything, but if someone posts a comment as a response to the definition then I’ll post a comment and send an email to students who posted additional comments, saying, ‘That was a good comment. Was there anything else you would like to add?’ I spend a lot of time behind the scenes encouraging students to participate. Then at the end of the first quiz I post a summary of how the group did and ask group members what they will do differently the next time so that they can succeed. It’s a lot of work, but it’s really exciting to watch the groups form and work well together,” Jones says.

When a group works well together, they help each other and pay attention to group processes such as internal (group-established) deadlines. Jones makes it a point to foster collaboration rather than competitiveness among her students. “I want them to think about what they have contributed to the group individually and then work on contributing even more. Part of the learning process is learning from what you did and then improving how you worked so the next time you do it you do an even better job. I really want students to feel a sense of commitment to the success of the other students in the group as well as contributing to their own success,” Jones says.

Thus far, Jones has found that this structure has reduced the issue of social loafing. “As part of the group quizzes, if someone doesn’t contribute they couldn’t just take the group’s answer and use it to answer the quiz questions. So there was this sense that they were really working together, and they were contributing equally. That’s why it was so successful.”

Jones does not place restrictions on how students collaborate, but students typically work on the discussion boards. “If they decided they really wanted to spend time on the phone or send emails that I couldn’t see, I would have to step in and say, ‘I’ll have to have a copy of them because I’m evaluating your performance based on your contributions, and I can’t see your contributions if you’re doing them some way other than on the discussion board.’ I have also given them the option of using the virtual [synchronous] classroom. My undergraduate students haven’t taken advantage of that, but the graduate students have,” Jones says.

Based on a 2008 survey, Jones’s students have had positive feedback regarding the group online quizzes. Among the findings of this survey:

• 70 percent agreed or strongly agreed that group quizzes were an effective way to learn the material.
• 69 percent agreed or strongly agreed that the members of the group helped to keep them participating in productive dialogue.
• 80 percent of the students agreed that the members of the group were helpful in identifying areas of agreement and disagreement on course topics in a way that helped them learn.

Excerpted from “Group Quizzes—a Strategy for Fostering Collaborative Critical Thinking.” Online Classroom (Oct. 2010): 5,8. Print.

Make collaboration mandatory. “You have to make collaboration and participation mandatory in your courses. If it’s a choice, if you give students a choice of participating, I think you are telling them that collaboration is not that important,” Baca says. “If you can do something practical, students are going to be so much more engaged. It helps illustrate why it’s important.”

As for their concerns about finding the time to collaborate, Baca says that this is a challenge for everybody and is careful to not dismiss their concerns about the time it will take or the difficulty of coordinating the group’s efforts.

Provide advance notice that there will be collaborative assignments. Given students’ concerns about collaborative learning, it’s essential to let them know well in advance the extent and nature of what will be expected of them in the course. In addition to listing expectations in the syllabus (which she quizzes students on), Baca opens discussion forums between group members a month before a collaborative project begins, to get students comfortable interacting with each other.

Have students create a collaboration plan. There are different ways for students to work collaboratively, and what works for one group may not work for another. This is why it’s important to allow students to develop their own group processes. To that end, Baca has each group devise and submit to her a collaboration plan, delineating who will be responsible for which aspect of the project, how they will communicate, and when tasks will be accomplished.

In addition, she has them answer questions such as the following: What technology are you going to be using? What sources are you going to be researching? What is your backup plan if someone is not participating? Are you going to exchange phone numbers? What technology tools do you think will work best? How do you think this project will be best delivered to the rest of the class—as a Web page, wiki, or PowerPoint presentation? “They’re all open-ended questions to get them to think about [the collaboration process] because oftentimes they don’t think about those kinds of things until the very end,” Baca says.

Observe and monitor group participation. “For some of the discussions I’m very involved as far as posting and responding to students, and saying things like, ‘This is an interesting comment. Can you elaborate on this?’ Just being there helps move the discussion along. For other discussions, like for the open forums for them to work together on collaborative projects, it’s more of me checking in: ‘Can you give me an update as to what’s going on? Were you able to get together as planned?’ It’s just me pushing them along through the process,” Baca says.

For the graded discussion questions she responds to students via email on a rotating basis. “If I have 25 students and they have to post at least twice during the week—and most people don’t just post twice a week, they post a lot more than that—it just gets overwhelming to respond to every student. I want students to know that I’m reading their comments. I think that’s so important, and because I cannot always respond to every single student, that’s my way to make sure that every student at least three or four times during the semester is getting something from me. That tells them that although I may not respond to them every single week, I’m reading their posts and they are valuable to me and the other students. I’m so amazed at how many people say, ‘Thank you so much for the feedback. Oftentimes we have all these discussions and nobody ever says anything about it. Nobody ever responds.’

“I think that is why students feel like it’s a waste of time or they get annoyed at these discussions, because it’s more of a chore and nothing is done with it. There is no meaning. As instructors we don’t always make meaning of their participation. If you’re going to ask students to participate and collaborate and be engaged, you need to be responsive to that and let them know how that comes into the bigger picture of the class and their learning. I think that’s when they understand why we’re doing this and they’re much more open to doing it.”

Excerpted from Kelly, Rob “Fostering Collaboration in the Online Classroom.” Online Classroom, (September 2010): 3. Print.

What does the literature say about the benefits of engaging students?
Cassidy: As far back as 1987, Arthur Chickering and Zelda Gamson encouraged teachers to reflect on how and what they were doing in lesson planning and class time to engage learners (and to explain these to students). Their paper, “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education,” remains a classic.

More recently, we have seen some very good publications that summarize empirical and theoretical evidence of the benefits of engaging learners. Two such examples, both in the form of books with a multitude of references to explore, are by John Bransford and colleagues (How People Learn) in 2000 and Susan Ambrose and colleagues (How Learning Works) in 2010. The most recent issues of the journal, Active Learning in Higher Education, include articles on such diverse topics as lecture notes, peer-assisted learning, meta assessment and academic misconduct.

What process do you recommend for selecting engagement techniques to suit a specific class, situation, and/or student demographic?
Cassidy: I think that instructors need to carefully think about what they currently do in class time. What is working well, and how do you know that or how could you find out? Are there certain lessons or sections of the course that you most want to inject with some new ideas for active learning? What is your intended goal in making a change? Have you asked students for input? In doing so, you will have already made a valuable step forward in engaging your learners. I suggest you check out Classroom Assessment Techniques by Tom Angelo and Patricia Cross for specific tools.

If you teach a large class in a fixed-seat lecture theatre, you may want to choose active techniques where students don’t need to move out of their seats. There are many of these. I like to remind teachers that active does not always need to mean interactive. And, there are several ways for students to be interactive, while staying in their seats in any size classroom.

Taking part in professional development seminars, attending conferences, talking with colleagues, and reading some published articles are all good ways to find about others’ experiences with techniques, to help you decide what to try, and how to do it for the best chance of success. I would never recommend that teachers try using problem-based learning or team-based learning without exploring some of the basic suggestions for success in terms of group size, content and process. While lots of other techniques are easier to experiment with on a trial-and-error basis, there is no replacement for keeping lines of communication open with your students and your fellow teachers.

What are some common mistakes instructors make regarding student engagement?
Cassidy: Designing an activity that, though active and/or engaged, does not have a clear connection to the intended objectives of that class is a mistake; students won’t see the point, may (correctly) think of it as “busy work,” and be less inclined to take part in future activities.

Introducing too many techniques all at once can be confusing to your students (and to you)!

Not explaining to students why a particular activity is taking place and how it can benefit their learning is not only unfair to them but can lead to poor results that could show up in students’ assignments and/or your teaching evaluations.

What do you look for in determining whether or not an engagement technique is working?
Cassidy: I think part of it is to see how it is actually feeling as it happens in class. For a student to come up and tell you that she “cannot believe how quickly the class went by” might be a good indication. Or for a student to say, “Hey, I get it!” because of the technique you used, will tell you a lot.

I think you have to look at two things in concert. First, students’ work and progress as it takes place during class time and in assignments that stem out of such engagement. Second, in their feedback to you, and through formative and summative evaluation.

Finally, be prepared to adjust activities over time. Something might work well for a particular group or class, but not in another situation or context. Reflect on these experiences, talk with colleagues and decide how to best move forward. Don’t give up on a technique because it does not go as well as you hoped the very first time. Like any good teaching and learning, practice and then practice some more.

Earlier this year Cassidy presented a seminar titled Ten Ways to Actively Engage Your Students.
Learn more about the seminar »

Selecting and preparing mentors
Widman, a former CFO for a nonprofit organization, drew on friends and colleagues in the nonprofit sector to serve as mentors. “While I was going through the process of lining up my friends to do this, they in turn were talking to contacts of theirs who I had never met but who expressed a willingness and interest to get involved,” Widman says.

Most of these mentors are willing to participate semester after semester, perhaps due in part to the culture of the nonprofit sector, but also because Widman does not ask too much of these mentors and is clear about their role.

“I have to be very clear in terms of the expectations and constraints that I’m going to put on the contact between the student and them,” Widman says.

The top concern is the amount of time involved. Widman explains to them that they are not surrogate professors and will not be involved in grading students’ work. The course is 12 weeks long, and mentoring begins in week six or seven.

Students make the first contact with the mentors via email, and Widman instructs mentors to respond to each email with 48 hours. Students are asked to limit their contact with their mentors to two emails per week. Mentors can answer questions and offer advice, but they are not to rewrite students’ assignments.

Preparing students
Contacting a mentor for advice can be intimidating for some students. Widman helps by providing background information and advice on how to work with mentors. “I lay out the mentors’ background so they understand the resources available to them and give them an idea of the types of things they might want to ask. I have a discussion board where students post the types of questions they might want to ask. I tell them they have free range to steal someone else’s question and ask it of their mentor,” Widman says.

Student-student interaction
One semester, Widman assigned students in pairs to each mentor with the idea that working as a team would create a good team-learning experience. This arrangement made sense in theory, but Widman found that the compressed time period and the logistics of students having to coordinate their efforts limited the amount of interaction they had with the mentor.

Students do have opportunities to interact with each other about the mentor experience on the discussion board, however. Although they rarely volunteer information about their interactions with mentors, students are usually willing to offer advice to other students who ask for it. “It’s not unusual for a comment to come through that says, ‘I asked my mentor a similar question, and this is the answer I got. ….’ Every once in a while students will ask me to reconcile opinions from different mentors. The nonprofit sector is not monolithic, so sometimes I reconcile those answers. But more often than not, students are interested in seeing similarities even though one might be dealing with an economic development agency while another is dealing with a nonprofit health clinic,” Widman says.

Student reaction
Student reaction to the mentoring experience has been positive. “There’s a lot of surprise. This is something that is very new to them. They recognize the uniqueness of this, and by that second or third email they see the power of it. They have someone who is not the professor that they could get an answer on a content issue from. I think that’s pretty unusual,” Widman says.

The college has added sections of the course because of the increased student demand based on word of mouth. In the most recent course evaluation, 80 percent of students rated the course as exceptionally beneficial.

Excerpted from Kelly, R. “Providing Practitioner Mentors for Online Learners.” Online Classroom (June 2010): 3,5. Print.

What are some common behaviors of difficult students?

Brian: Some behaviors that I have experienced in the classroom that I would consider disruptive often center on inattentive behaviors and those indicating a poor sense of classroom motivation. Here the students are surfing on their laptops, checking their phones for text messages, or generally not paying attention to the lecture at hand. More serious disruptive behaviors have involved students who directly and persistently challenge my authority in the classroom or seek to disagree with points in the lecture merely to make their own unrelated points.

Perry: The common behavior I see is chronic tardiness to class. These are the students who are perpetually late and as they come in, usually find the one seat in the room that causes the most disruption as he or she settles in. Other disruptive behaviors have included side conversations, monopolizing the discussion with your own agenda, electronic issues (cell phones, PDA, inappropriate laptop usage, etc.), and leaving early without discussing it with the instructor.

Are there certain difficult or disruptive behaviors that are becoming more prevalent among college students?

Brian: I think the inattentive behaviors mentioned above are the most common for students to demonstrate in the classroom. These are often followed quickly by either rude or disrespectful behavior or what I would consider a general lack of civility and manners in the classroom.

Perry: There has been an increase in a lack of respect and common manners towards each other and the instructor. This comes out in classroom discussion, private conversations between the instructor and the student, and a lack of a willingness to meet someone halfway.

What are some common mistakes professors make in dealing with difficult students?

Brian: I think the most common mistake is adapting the approach of “It’s my way or the highway” or exerting power and control too quickly and in a heavy-handed fashion when a more sophisticated, tactical response would get the job done more effectively—for example, embarrassing a student who is misusing technology in the classroom in front of the entire class instead of taking the time to meet with the student after class and have a more respectful conversation with them about what they are doing and why you find it distracting. The latter approach takes more time and requires more patience from the faculty member—but it often is more effective in achieving long-term compliance. It also teaches the student the idea of giving respect to get respect.

Perry: One common mistake is instructors who do not share their classroom expectations at the beginning of the course. Often the syllabus contains all the course assignment information but very few classroom expectations. Additionally, if the expectations are in the syllabus, they need to be shared during the first class, just like you would share the information on the assignments. The expectations also need to be flexible to meet the needs of the instructor as he or she teaches AND the students as they learn. It is generally not a one way highway.

What are some possible consequences of ineffective classroom management?

Brian: If they are too heavy-handed in their approach, faculty can end up creating an atmosphere of fear in the classroom that will ensure compliance but never quite achieve a respectful classroom atmosphere. Students will comply with behavior out of fear of being embarrassed and never truly buy-in as stakeholders in the process of learning. If a faculty member ignores classroom behavior then they run the risk of losing total control of their classroom, which also drastically impacts the creation of a successful learning environment.

Perry: Not being clear about your expectations leaves the students with no boundaries and sets them up to have a run-in with the instructor. Also, being rigid with your expectations invites silence in the classroom, with students not buying into the course because they do not respect the instructor.

In the online video seminar, Classroom Management 102: Working with Difficult Students, Drs. Brian Van Brunt and Perry Francis provide four live-action demonstrations of typical classroom management problems, including the right and wrong way to respond to the unwanted behavior. Learn More >>

Q: Handling complaints might be something that is new to some administrators. How can they prepare for it?

Gunsalus: The first preparation is to know and be comfortable with yourself and why you’ve gone into this line of work. How do you fit in the institution? What are you hoping to achieve through this service? Because if you don’t know why you are doing it or how you feel about what you can contribute, when the problems arise, it’s much harder to get through them comfortably and intact. That happens through introspection and conversation with those selecting you for the position.

The second is the conceptual skill of understanding that there will be complaints, and however much it seems personal and however much somebody claims it is a personal thing, you have to see the complaints as simply part of the role. It’s important not to overpersonalize the situation, even if somebody says, “You are the worst thing that ever happened to this department.” It’s going to feel personal because it’s going to be framed personally, but it’s about the decisions you are making in pursuing the role that you have accepted. That’s an intellectual process, because it’s never going to feel good. You simply have to understand that it’s part of the role to make decisions and that there are going to be complaints.

A third way to prepare is to become familiar with what resources are available, because dealing with complaints is not an individual sport—it’s a team sport. So you need to know the resource people who can help you figure out the proper procedure to apply to each complaint, because you handle a complaint about access to parking with a different process than you handle a sexual harassment complaint, which requires a different process than does a research misconduct allegation, which requires a different process than does failure to promote or a racial/sexual discrimination complaint or a complaint of capricious grading. You have know who to ask to help you navigate the policies so you know the proper process to follow.

Q: In your book you mention the need to hear at least two sides of an issue. What about those instances where you feel pressure to make a decision but you don’t feel you have the time to get the full story?

Gunsalus: The first thing I would say is, “Let’s get a grip,” because there are a lot of situations in which people will come to you and say, “This is an emergency.” They may feel very stressed and demand an immediate resolution, but there are few situations that are true emergencies. A true emergency is when someone’s safety is at risk. If you need to do something without full process, it needs to be clearly stipulated that it’s an interim step while the process unfolds.

Here’s an example. If there is an allegation of research misconduct that involves data fabrication, the first thing you do is get proper advice and support. There are times when the proper procedure is going to involve securing data so that an investigation can be done. Very few people have to do this, and they usually don’t have to do this by themselves. There is typically support from the research integrity officer or the university counsel, but they may have to be a part of the process that restricts access to the laboratory and the primary original data until copies can be made so the work in the lab can continue while the investigation uses the primary data. That’s a short-term process. If you have living organisms, there has to be care for that while the process in going on. Etc. If you don’t have time to hear at least two sides of a story, you are not going to be able to make a sound decision.

Q: What advice do you have for documenting complaints?

Gunsalus: When you take notes, there are things that belong in there and things that do not belong there. You should record only factual elements. You should never record what you think, because it is hard enough if it comes to a legal process to defend what you did. The last thing you ever want to do is to record your thoughts so you have to defend those as well.

For more on this topic, you might be interested in a seminar Gunsalus led titled “Basic Guidelines for Handling Complaints.” Learn More »

Reprinted from “How to Handle Complaints.” Academic Leader, 26.5 (2010): 6.

What are some characteristics of effective program-level assessment?
Shibley: You need to do something with the results. Oftentimes, data is collected and reported, but what’s being done with it? So often assessment is focused on improving students’ learning, but there’s also an opportunity to showcase what a department or program is doing as well. It could be used to help improve the learning opportunities for students. It could also be used to promote the program to incoming students.

I think it’s important that faculty work collaboratively to define learning outcomes so that they’re all on the same page. And I think that’s a great faculty development opportunity. Sometimes with assessment initiatives, just having the conversation is valuable. Assessment helps faculty see how their course is connected to the overall program. At another level, it may help faculty help students understand why they might need a particular course as part of their program.

Effective assessment needs to include direct evidence of student learning—what skills, abilities, knowledge, and attributes are they exhibiting as a result of participating in the program? Direct evidence could include embedded test questions, portfolios, or standardized tests. There can be a combination of direct and indirect evidence, which is typically measured by instruments such as surveys and exit interviews.

I think you have to be realistic in terms of resources. I think one of the things that makes an assessment program successful is being cognizant of faculty members’ other responsibilities.

How can programs coordinate their assessment efforts?
Shibley: One of the things that’s important is that there are opportunities for faculty to share information. If they’re not working together on a particular assessment initiative at the department level or they’ve divided it up depending on the research that is available, they need to share so that they’re aware of the implications of the assessment. I also think that just by having those conversations you might be able to help faculty understand that they’re doing assessment already and that all they need to do is formalize it and share it so that benefits the program as a whole.

Who should be in charge of assessment?
Shibley: The obvious answer is faculty, particularly a faculty member who has been participating in or who has expressed an interest in assessment. I think more and more departments are finding that new faculty coming in have some kind of assessment experience or they have knowledge of the scholarship of teaching and learning. So take advantage of that, but don’t burden the new faculty members with that as they go through the promotion and tenure process. You need to bring in other faculty who are tenured because when senior-level faculty support the initiative you gain respect for it.

In an interview with Academic Leader, Mariangela Maguire, associate professor of communication and former academic dean at Gustavus Adolphus College, and Laura Behling, associate provost for faculty affairs and interdisciplinary programs at Butler University, provided advice for developing faculty leaders.

Reach out to senior faculty. “When asking for volunteers, we tend to go to the usual suspects. For instance, we have a mentoring program for our incoming tenure-line faculty. It had been going on for several years, and it was OK but not terribly dynamic. When I became academic dean, I realized that there were a lot of senior-level faculty who we assumed were disengaged, and we didn’t ask them to be mentors. So we changed that. It changed their perception because we were saying to them, ‘Remember, you are a senior faculty member, and you have an awful lot to offer incoming faculty. You’re the history of the institution. You’re going to help them understand the culture of this place.’ That, I think, was a powerful change that we made. Of course, you have to be careful—there are always difficult people you don’t particularly want mentoring your new faculty. But there are a lot of people who maybe don’t know that they’re valued any longer, and I think it’s important to reach out to them,” Maguire says.

Provide low-stakes leadership opportunities. Effective department chairs don’t take full responsibility for every bit of programming within the unit. There are low-stakes projects that could help faculty members become leaders. Leading a meeting with alumni from start to finish, for example, could help a faculty member learn how to work within budget, work with food services, reach out to stakeholders, and, most important, build confidence for future leadership roles, Maguire says.

Form groups thoughtfully. “Look for ways to group people together so that perhaps newer faculty can learn from more experienced leaders about how a small group can bring something to the larger department,” Behling says. “I think what that really requires is for the department chair or committee chair to be thoughtful, to really think about the ways that a group gets put together. We’re not just trying to complete a search, for example, but this is grooming the next generation of faculty. Sometimes that’s hard to do, and sometimes we’re pressed for time, and that’s the last thing we actually have time to do or even want to think about. But I think it does make a positive difference in the health of the department. This is an educational process with our colleagues rather than just with students,” Behling says.

Expect conflict. “I think you’re going to have more conflict because people are going to be more aware of issues, priorities, and processes. But I think it will be productive rather than unproductive conflict. It will be informed conflict. It will be sharing ideas and thinking up better solutions in these incredibly difficult financial times rather than people just being entrenched,” Maguire says.

Excerpted from “Developing Formal and Informal Faculty Leaders.” Academic Leader, 26.4 (2010): 7-8.

Q: What pedagogical advantages does screen capture technology offer?
Yearwood: The opportunity to develop course content in a way that personalizes instruction. It is almost like having your personal tutor whose message never changes regardless of how many times you rewind or review the content. Anytime, anyplace, on demand instruction.

Q: What types of content lends itself to the screen capture format? What suggestions do you have for selecting content for this format?
Yearwood:

• Tutorials–how-to instructions, explanations, or clarifications–potentially better to use the Vodcast instead of the Podcast option to enhance the visual appeal
• Demonstrations of a laboratory operation, showing a sequence of activities, or teaching software use, etc.
• Information dissemination or instructions–anything from the syllabus, test instructions, review of a concepts or review of tests, etc.

Q: What suggestions do you have for integrating what you do online and what you do face to face?
Yearwood: The technology of screen capturing/recording allows for the creation or simulation of the kind of activities that we may do in a face-to-face setting. Being able to mimic face-to-face activities could greatly, and hopefully positively, impact what we do in online environments.

Q: What suggestions do you have for including students in recorded sessions?
Yearwood: Select students that represent the diversity within the class–gender, ethnicity, older than average students, bright or A student, a B student, a student who may be struggling, etc. The goal here is to replicate the class, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale, so that the discussions which take place will be more valuable to all students.

The expectation is that the range of questions, the interactions would appeal to most in the class because the mix of students participating in recorded sessions. With this mix, it is highly likely that questions asked will be representative of the type that peers would have.

Explanations/answers are also likely to be phrased in ways that students might better comprehend – a way to diversify approaches to problem solving and ways of explaining a phenomenon. In essence, it’s a good way to achieve peer teaching.

In an email interview, Therese Huston, founding director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Seattle University and author of Teaching What You Don’t Know (Harvard University Press, 2009), shared her thoughts on how to survive teaching under these challenging circumstances.

Q: What advice do you have for preparing to teach new content on short notice?
Huston: This is a really tricky situation, obviously. The most important step is to find out what students must know. You can ask why the course is being offered to a certain group of students, at a certain point in the curriculum. If there’s a pre-existing syllabus in the department, sit down with another person in the department, ideally the department chair if that person will be supportive, to discuss what’s most important for students to learn in this course. Looking at the course objectives on the syllabus can help you, but you’ll gain much more from a conversation from a colleague who wants to make sure students leave your course with the tools and knowledge they need to succeed in other courses.

If there is no pre-existing syllabus, find one online that makes sense to you, ideally from a similar type of institution. Even though it might have the same course title, a syllabus from a community college course will probably look very different from one used at a research university that enrolls 200-300 students.

Q: Are there specific teaching methods that work best when teaching something out of one’s area of expertise? It seems that a learner-centered approach might be the way to go. On the other hand, some instructors might be tempted to fall back on tightly scripted lectures.
Huston: The temptation, sadly, is to fall back on tightly scripted lectures. In my interviews, it was clear that junior faculty often resort to lectures when they are teaching something they just learned. And it makes sense. There are lots of reasons that lectures are more comfortable. Compared to a discussion, lectures give you, the instructor, a much greater sense of control, which is comforting when you’re teaching outside your comfort zone. Lectures also decrease the likelihood that someone will ask a question you can’t answer (which may not be a conscious reason you prefer lectures, but it’s a reality).

It seems like a contradiction at first–why would you want to be the know-it-all lecturing at the front of the class, when at best you’re a know-a-little? One person I interviewed, Eric Mazur from Harvard University, observed that one of the reasons people probably lecture on unfamiliar material is that the process of saying it aloud helps them learn the material. That’s good for your learning experience, but doesn’t mean the students learn as much.

Then there is the time factor. It takes time to step back, synthesize the information, and generate content-specific learner-centered activities, and time is a luxury people don’t always have when teaching outside their expertise.

All of that being said, a learner-centered approach is a much better way to go. A good compromise for the overwhelmed among us (and who isn’t at some point?) is to plan a lecture with brief but powerful active learning strategies sprinkled throughout that lecture. Some active learning techniques, such as Think-Pair-Share or Comparative Note-Taking, take very little time for the instructor to prepare, but lead to impressive gains in what students learn. Likewise, an instructor could use clickers and Peer Instruction periodically throughout a lecture to engage more students.

Q: How do you suggest instructors handle a situation in which a student or several students are more knowledgeable on the course content than the instructor?
Huston: We’re all bound to face this dilemma. First, be proactive. It’s valuable to find out how much students know about a topic. In the first week of a course, you could pass out note cards where students write their names, contact info and any previous courses, interests, experiences they have related to the topics in your course. Then you can draw upon these students for examples later in the course. It’s unsettling to be surprised by an expert sitting in the back row who starts heckling you in week two.

Once you’ve identified these students, and you’ve checked with them to be sure they still want to take the course, ask if it’s OK to call on them occasionally to offer their input, experiences, or examples. Students often enjoy the attention and will be more challenged in a course that’s otherwise addressing some familiar concepts.

• Be explicit and optimistic about expectations for course participation. “I tell students upfront, — ‘I want you to sign in at last three times a week and your attendance in this course is being monitored.’ By doing this, I hope to create a little momentum, get them in the habit of coming to the course. If they’re more active in the course, I’ve found that they tend to become a little bit more motivated,” Alejandro said.
• Encourage students to talk to one another and question each other. Build this into your discussions by having students post a message and respond to others. This reduces the feeling of isolation and creates “a little bit of a cohort effect.” Students who get to know one another tend to want to take subsequent online courses together, which can improve motivation as well. Positive interactions among students can help motivate students who are not as comfortable in the online environment because they feel that they can rely on the faculty member and classmates, Alejandro said.
• Build in accountability by assigning students on a rotating basis to summarize the weekly discussion, Dennis said.
• Link discussion topics to learning outcomes. Dennis keeps a bank of questions and looks for new ways of asking them. She keeps the learning objectives in front of her and tries to match the questions to the learning objectives week by week. When she has trouble coming up with good questions, she’ll often go back to the readings. “I take responsibility for that. That’s much better in the long run than putting up questions that you know at the time are kind of so-so,” Dennis said. After students post a couple of things, she monitors the discussion to determine how to improve it and keep it lively.
• Have students contribute discussion questions. Alejandro suggests dividing assignments or chapters into sections and have students contribute the questions that are going to be asked in a given week. This gives students the opportunity to ask questions that are relevant to them.

Excerpted from “Tips from the Pros – Maintaining Motivation in Online Discussions.” Online Classroom, November 2009, 1, 7.

“The rules are different online. The online professor has to make a sincere effort to deliver or present an online teaching persona. It may come in different ways. From the way the online professor responds—in writing—to the entire class or the single student. It may be in the way the online professor expresses humor using emoticons or simply words. It might be in videos that introduce each week or chapter in the course,” Phillips says.

In Phillips’ view, one’s online teaching persona is so closely linked to course design that it is “difficult if at all possible” to establish one’s persona in a course designed by somebody else. “Teaching style and online teaching persona go hand in hand. No one teaches exactly like another. Adding your persona to a course you did not develop is a challenge.”

As for the tools he recommends for projecting one’s online teaching persona, “The introductory e-mail prior to the start of the course is a great way to begin to project your persona. It also begins the process of ‘swift trust’ (defined by Myerson, Weick, and Kramer (1996) as “a concept relating to temporary teams, teams whose existence is formed around a clear purpose, common tasks within a finite life span.”)

Using Web 2.0 tools and technologies also helps facilitate the persona. “I like to believe that synchronous and asynchronous video is the superior technology to deliver the online teaching” persona, Phillips says. “We are experimenting with different approaches to the introductory video … [and] of course, there are also tools like discussions, e-mail, synchronous and asynchronous meeting applications, and even audio in your PowerPoint presentations. Still photographs also carry a strong message. Adding a personal photograph to your course syllabus adds to the entire package.”

Like other aspects of online instruction, it’s important to determine what works and what doesn’t work in one’s courses in terms of instructional persona. “We don’t recommend radical changes to online courses once you begin. That’s going to create more turmoil. But it’s important to be able to communicate with the students—whether it is synchronous via chat or perhaps by using a survey instrument—to get at the heart of what’s going on.”

Reference
Meyerson, D., Weick, K., & Kramer, R. (1996). Swift trust and temporary groups. In R. M. Kramer & T. R. Tyler (Eds.), Trust in organizations: Frontiers of theory and research (pp. 166-195), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Excerpted from Online Classroom, January 2010, 8.

Kent Crookston, PhD, who has served as an academic administrator for 20 years, shared his thoughts with Academic Leader on how to become a better, more confident decision maker.

Q: How open should a leader be about decisions he or she makes individually?
Crookston: This has to be considered on a case-by-case basis; some decisions with individuals must remain confidential. In principle, however, decisions should be as transparent as possible. It is important to consider whether there are others who will be impacted by the decision, and if so their input should usually be sought.

It is wise for academic leaders to consult with their superior on any sensitive decisions, and also to involve legal counsel and human resources whenever in doubt. If a decision leads into uncharted territory, one must consider whether a precedent will be inferred and what the impact of that will be.

A key is to have in place policies and procedures upon which individual decisions will be made so that favoritism, partiality, discrimination, prejudice, etc. are minimized.

Q: What process do you recommend for making good collective decisions?
Crookston: There’s not a quick answer, nor is it a quick process. Depending on the importance of the decision, it may be necessary to spend months. It is usually helpful to discuss and agree at the outset how the decision will be made, especially who will make it. Equally important is the clarification of a handful of values and priorities of the unit (three to five) that must be honored by the decision. Input should be solicited from all stakeholders and should be processed and resubmitted for input, perhaps several times.

Procedures are available for assuring that the selected option will be best for the unit, not for just one individual or faction. If you are the decision maker, your own humility is essential. One way to maximize groupwide benefit is to assemble the group once the most viable options have been identified. Begin by limiting the discussion to only the pros of option A. The group is thus unified in its dialogue, which continues until all option A pros and related discussion are exhausted. The group can then move to the pros of option B, then to the cons of A, the cons of B, etc.

The facilitator ([who] should not be the decision maker) needs to watch body language and engage those who withdraw or shut down. Before settling on an option, it may be desirable to break the group up so that individuals can retreat to solitude and reflect on what has been said–away from overbearing or charismatic personalities. Then, when they’re ready, participants can submit their thoughtful individual input.

AL: How do you minimize second-guessing of decisions? How much second-guessing is too much?
Crookston: Yogi Berra said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” I heard Norman Schwarzkopf say that there are only two things you need to know about leadership: “First, when placed in command, take charge. Second, do the right thing.” In light of these two quotes, we might ask: Which is the right thing? Or which is the right fork to take? Schwarzkopf continued his two statements by pointing out that any unit worth leading will contain people who will tell you when you’re making a mistake. Listen to them, and make corrections as necessary.

Yogi Berra apparently also said that once you’ve traveled down a selected fork you will be able to see around the bend, and if it’s all wrong you can usually turn back and go the other way. The key is to not stall in a state of indecision, and [to] be watchful and willing to self-correct. If your three to five values are clear, you will be able to make adjustments that zero in on them. Pilots say their airplane is off course 99 percent of the time, but by making continual adjustments they arrive at their destination spot on.

AL: What can a leader learn from a bad decision?
Crookston: In his 2008 book, The Truth About Making Smart Decisions, Robert Gunther writes: “To make better decisions, make more mistakes.” He says that one good mistake can teach us more than all the successful decisions combined, and tells us to allow others to make mistakes as well. My son’s second-grade teacher would stop the class when one of the students made a mistake, and together they would all see what they could learn from the mistake of that one student. One day our son came home and excitedly said, “Mom, guess what. I made two mistakes today.” He then told her what the class had all learned from them. Gunther also advises us to learn from our close calls.

For more on decision-making, see Three Keys to Effective Decision-making for Academic Leaders, a seminar presented by Crookston in March 2010. Learn more »

1. Require students to give feedback to a peer each time they post to a forum.
2. Assign critical friends for feedback on blog posts or reflection activities.
3. Have a minimum post rule of three sentences. Sentence #1 is “I agree with so and so”; sentence #2 is “I think [or I believe] this or that”; and in sentence #3 students finally must say something substantive.
4. Combine asynchronous discussion with a synchronous visit from the expert before and after the discussion starts.
5. Use Flash animations of content with reflection.

During the seminar, Bonk elaborated on the use of Flash animations: “One short two-minute video does more for learning than reading the book for four hours. Reading about the Enron crisis for two years, I learned nothing. Watching a video of it, I learned everything I needed to know.

“I’m overstating a little bit here, but you get the point. And these have become cheaper. They’ve become more functional. They’ve become easier to embed with broadband. If we don’t consider Flash animations in certain subject areas, we’re not proceeding in an interactive, engaging way with our students, especially visual learners. …”

For information about ordering recordings or transcripts of this online seminar, go here »

Reprinted from “Tips from the Pros – How to Increase Interactivity in an Online Course.” Online Classroom, Dec. 2009.