ReflectionsFrom the Classroom

Essays on teaching written by notable KU faculty members

2005–06

Reflections From the Classroom2005–06

Volume 8

Foreword 2 Dan Bernstein

Peer Review of Teaching and Learning: Can We Talk? 3Christopher Haufler

Reflections on Retreats: Time for Considering the Intellectual Work of Teaching 7Beth Innocenti Manolescu

Convergence 10Elizabeth Friis

Thought Candy: Metaphor in Education 13 Todd D. Little

How Do You Get the Freshmen of Today to Become the Graduate Students 16of Tomorrow?Michael S. Vitevitch

The Body in the Mind: Energizing Philosophy Through Service 19Ann Cudd

Reflections From the Classroom is edited by Judy EddyText design by Anne Grantski

A publication of the Center for Teaching ExcellenceUniversity of KansasBudig Hall1455 Jayhawk Blvd. #135Lawrence, KS 66045-7604Phone 785.864.4199 u cte@ku.edu u www.ku.edu/~cte

Mary Huber is a senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. She is acultural anthropologist by background, and she used her ethnographic field skills to interview a broadsample of faculty members about their working lives. What she found were the core practices and customsof the academic clan, and she has suggested in a number of places that there are several attributes com-mon to all scholarly activity. These include being well informed by prior work and using methods ofinquiry agreed upon by peers. Once evidence is gathered appropriate to the inquiry at hand, a member ofthe community of scholars will reflect on that evidence and make it accessible for peers and colleagues tolearn from and review. In that vein, we are very pleased to make public the reflections of some of our col-leagues at KU. They have been working on teaching projects, asking good questions about how to bemore effective as teachers, and we invited them to offer us some of their lessons learned.

Chris Haufler offers a glimpse into how one academic unit is making an effort to improve the conver-sations faculty members have about teaching. Since he and his colleagues were not prepared for talkingabout teaching in their own graduate education, they are borrowing some ideas to try out in their setting.Beth Manolescu describes how her department has come to value setting aside time for conversationsabout teaching and learning. Their focused and collaborative time reflecting on teaching and learning hashad tangible results, and it is clear why the CTE Advisory Board recognized the Department ofCommunication Studies for its collaborative work on learning.

Lisa Friis writes about the gradual development of her reflection about her teaching, beginning with acut and paste approach to producing an organized documentation of one of her classes. Over a longerperiod of time she found that structured occasions that called for reflection on the quality of student workresulted in improved learning for her students. And she has an online course portfolio that represents wellher energy in developing that course. Todd Little also tries to make quality of ideas accessible to his stu-dents of advanced statistical modeling techniques, and he has found that metaphors and analogies helpstudents make sense of very complex mathematics. He notes that is at least as important that studentsunderstand the function and meaning of a statistical procedure as it is for them to appreciate the precisionof the mathematics that drives it.

For Mike Vitevitch, participation in the KU Thematic Learning Communities provided an occasionfor reflection on how well his teaching was supporting interdisciplinary study by students. The opportuni-ty to create a really interdisciplinary bridging course gave rise to a number of insights into his teaching.Ann Cudd found that meeting with KU colleagues gave rise to useful reflection on implementing com-munity engagement into her teaching. Her experience connects with Lisa Friis’ in that participation in afaculty program provided an occasion for generative reflection, and she too has developed her work intoan electronic course portfolio that makes her work visible to colleagues. Ann’s upbeat conclusion from herengaged learning class gives a great example of the kind of change in both teachers and learners that cancome from reflection on teaching with colleagues.

Overall we are happy to share these experiences related to teaching from KU faculty members.Together they demonstrate that intentional teaching is alive and well at the University, and the continuingfocus on successful learning by our students is embraced by many faculty members.

Dan BernsteinDirector, Center for Teaching Excellence

Foreword

2 Reflections

Reflections 3

Christopher HauflerEcology and Evolutionary

Biology

Heard on the streets of Mt. Oread:“Hey, Dan, would you mindreading this manuscript I’ve writ-ten? I’ve put together some newideas and I’m looking for a freshperspective on how well I’veargued my points.”

“Sure, Chris, no problem! I’lllet you know what I think.”

Not heard on the streets of Mt.Oread:“Hey, Dan, would you mind sit-ting in on the lecture I’m givingtomorrow? I’ve developed a newway of helping students learn,and I’d like to know whether ornot you think I’ve succeeded.”

“Sure, Chris, no problem! I’llsee you in class and let you knowwhat I think.”

Asking a colleague to read andcomment on a paper or to cri-tique a grant proposal is some-thing that most of us considerroutine. It is an accepted part ofour academic culture, and wegenuinely benefit from the inputof our peers—it energizes ourscholarship and helps us honeour ideas and present them effec-tively. And everyone gains.Writers polish their products.Readers gain perspectives ontheir colleague’s research andmay pick up ideas relevant totheir own work.

But how many of us (exceptthose in the promotion pipeline)

invite our colleagues to sit in ona lecture, review a syllabus, orcomment on an exam? Talkingabout teaching is not somethingwe have been guided to do; it isnot something we even thinkabout regularly. Whereas we seekour peers’ opinions about ourresearch and creative scholarship,we keep our teaching to our-selves and our students.

Student evaluations arenecessary but not sufficient

Like most of my colleagues inthe Division of BiologicalSciences, and those across KU, Iappreciate the value of studentevaluations of teaching. Studentscan provide perspectives on theinstructor’s lecture style, accessi-bility, and course organization.These perceptions are vital toour efforts to improve the quali-ty of our teaching and developour curricula. Student percep-tions certainly should be takeninto account as we pursue thecomplex endeavor of communi-cating knowledge effectively andeducating students. However,students cannot supply the rangeof feedback we need as instruc-tors. Obviously, they are notequipped to evaluate theirinstructor’s command of thesubject, nor can they commentconstructively on the range andquality of their instructor’s

Peer Review of Teaching and Learning: Can We Talk?

teaching methods. Relying pri-marily on students for feedbackon our teaching is a little likeexpecting our research subjectsto tell us how well we have con-ducted our experiments.

Are there options for gainingdeeper knowledge of teachingdynamics? Research has demon-strated that peer review can provide feedback and promotedialog about teaching, and suchreview is a required part of theprocess of applying for promo-tion and tenure. However, inspite of the positive value of peerreview of teaching, it has notbecome a regular feature of ouracademic pursuits.

Impediments to peerreview of teaching

One roadblock to peer reviewis that the process is time con-suming, and finding such timecan be daunting. But it is notalways time pressures that standin the way of peer review. Often,my colleagues and I wrestle withthe basic questions, “What arethe components of peer review?”and “Is this something weshould be expected to know?”

There is a very quietly statedassumption that the act ofobtaining a PhD imbues therecipient with the necessary skillsto teach and the insight to knowhow to help students learn. Byextension we are also supposedto be able to recognize effectiveteaching and provide appropriatefeedback to peers.

Good teachers canbecome good reviewers

Most KU faculty members aregood teachers—and many areextraordinary—and care deeplyabout helping students learn.However, in the same way that

gifted athletes can benefit fromexcellent coaching, even the bestteachers can learn from theirpeers. But as any athlete will bequick to tell you, good coachingis seldom intuitive, and goodcoaches must know what to lookfor in building great teams. Inthe academic realm, peer reviewmight be seen as the half-timepep-talk that invigorates andhelps orient teaching efforts.

In the Division of BiologicalSciences, many faculty membersactively reach out for opportuni-ties to enhance learning. They

attend Center for TeachingExcellence events, discuss theirteaching successes and frustra-tions, and see value in sharingideas about pedagogy. For most,however, peer review remains abit murky and misunderstood.

In biology, peer review typical-ly follows a lecture-attendancemodel consisting of visiting a lec-ture or class session; developingreactions, recommendations, per-ceptions, etc.; and preparing asummary of observations andsuggestions for improvement.This can be, of course, a valuablecomponent of peer review, but itshould not be the only elementthat is included because:• A course is much more than

one lecture. The peer reviewerwho attends one class sessionsees just one component ofthe course; at best, a snapshotof the semester-long activities;at worst, a bad day in theclassroom.

• When visiting a class, the peerreviewer may not know whatto expect, what to observe,what the teacher sees as thegoals of that session, etc.

• Faculty peers may not knowhow to translate their observa-tions into constructive recom-mendations for improvement.They may perceive that some-thing is not right, but theymay not be able to transformthat perception into a set ofpositive critiques that will helpthe peer educator improve.

Expanding peer reviewTo build on the lecture-atten-

dance model and extend my col-leagues’ skills as peer reviewers, Iworked with Dan Bernstein atCTE to develop ways to improvethe peer review process.Specifically, we sought to:• Help peer reviewers know

what to observe and review• Suggest what to look for and

what questions to ask• Provide insights on how to

gain perspectives on the wholecourse

• Reveal ways to develop con-structive feedback.Beginning with materials

designed for use by educationscholars, we extracted critical ele-ments and rewrote the text tofocus specifically on universitycourses. We wanted to develop adocument that would promptreviewers to think about the pos-sible components of the reviewprocess (including such items as

4 Reflections

Relying primarily on students for feedback on our teaching is a little like expecting our research subjects to tell us how well we have conducted our experiments.

a consideration of the facultymember’s goals, the course syl-labus, and evaluation proceduresand instruments) and the report-ing of review outcomes.

We did not want to mandateany particular procedure, but wedid want to lower the frustrationlevels of colleagues who wereseeking better ways to do a goodjob as a peer reviewer. Wedecided that we could develop a“guide” to peer review thatwould indicate the elements usu-ally included in a thoroughreview of a class.

Launching a prototypeFinding the best way to pre-

sent the guide to faculty col-leagues was the next challenge.By fortunate circumstance, mydepartment was conducting itsperiodic consideration of thewritten procedures describingthe annual evaluation of faculty.I noticed that one of the appen-dices to that document was acopy of the biological sciencesstudent evaluation of teachingform. It seemed that an idealcomplement to this appendixwould be one that described thepeer review process. I shared theguide draft with my colleaguesand discovered that it was notonly accepted as an appendix butwas actually welcomed as aninformational explanation forconducting peer reviews ofteaching. As an optionalresource, this guide was notintrusive or controlling, but itwas available to those who want-ed to take advantage of it.

From my own perspective, Isee an additional result from theavailability of this resource; byhelping my colleagues under-stand more about the process ofpeer review, we might have more

opportunities to contemplateteaching methods and shareexperiences that have improvedstudent learning. I see value forboth instructors and students inmoving university teaching fromits long tradition as a self-guided,introspective activity to some-thing that we discuss and debate.Although this guide is onlybeginning to be included as partof the mentoring of junior facul-ty, as it percolates through theculture of my department andperhaps as it is adopted by otherunits, we can use it to initiateconstructive dialogs about help-ing our students learn. So, canwe talk about teaching?!

Below is the text of the appendixthat is now part of the documentdescribing EEB departmentalannual evaluation procedures.

Guiding the PeerReview Process

The questions provided belowcan be adapted as prompts forrequesting feedback from a col-league on different portions ofyour teaching. They are excerpt-ed from sets of questions devel-oped as “exercises” for peerreview/collaboration by PatHutchings for the first AAHEpeer review project. The com-plete set can be found inHutchings’ (1995) From Idea toPrototype: The Peer Review ofTeaching (Washington DC:American Association for HigherEducation).

Syllabus ReviewAccording to Hutchings,

“Every course we craft is a lensinto our fields and our personalconceptions of those disciplinesor interdisciplines.” She suggests

that faculty members think care-fully about the goals and contentof courses.

Ask colleagues to offer com-ments like these from a review ofyour syllabus:• How does the course begin?

What do the instructor andthe students do as the courseprogresses? What are the keyassignments? How does thecourse end?

• In what ways does the courseteach students how scholarswork in this field; the meth-ods, procedures and valuesthat demonstrate how knowl-edge advances within the field?How does it open doors to thecritical dialogues and key argu-ments scholars are engaged inon the cutting edge of thisfield?

• How does the course integratewith other courses in theinstructor’s own or otherfields? To what extent does thecourse lay a foundation forothers that follow it? Or buildon what students have learnedin other courses?

• What does the peer reviewerexpect students to find partic-ularly fascinating about thecourse? Where will theyencounter greatest difficultiesof either understanding ormotivation? How does contentof the course connect to mat-ters students already under-stand or have experienced?Where will it seem most alien?How does the instructoraddress common studentresponses in the course?

Student WorkChoose an assignment—

instructions for a student project,paper, problem set, classroomassessment, computer simulation,

Reflections 5

etc.—that is designed to elicit animportant aspect of the learningyou intend for students in one ofyour courses. Attach to theassignment several samples ofstudent work, illustrating a rangeof responses, preferably withyour feedback included.

Ask your colleague to addressissues such as these:• How does the assignment’s

particular question, problem,or application reveal differ-ences in student understand-ings or interpretations of acritical concept? What patternsemerge from students’ work?

• What evidence does theassignment provide thatdemonstrates student learning?

• What does the assignment andstudents’ responses to it tell apeer reviewer about how stu-dents are constructing theideas that are central to thecourse and to the teachinggoals? What misconceptionsdo they have about theseideas? How does the instruc-tor identify and address student errors and misinter-pretations?

• On what standards does theinstructor judge student workon this assignment? How dothese standards compare withthose in a more introducto-ry/advanced class? How arethe standards related to thestandards the peer reviewerwould use to evaluate a pieceof scholarship that a colleaguehas asked a peer to critique?

• What thoughts does the peerreviewer have about improvingthe assignment, the course, orthe instructor’s teaching as aconsequence of completingthis exercise?

InstructionalImplementation

Follow these guiding principlesfor classroom observations:• Conduct visits as part of a

consultation process thatincludes a pre-visit meeting todiscuss goals for each class andpurpose for the visit, and apost-visit debriefing to discusswhat happened and how theclass went.

• Let students know what ishappening and why.

• Think of classroom observa-tion as an occasion for discus-sion of departmental expectations.Discuss these questions with

the faculty member who isobserving you:• Why did you choose to have

this particular classroomepisode observed? Is it aunique interpretation youbring to the topic or is it sim-ply a “typical” day in yourclass? And, if so, why did youchoose that basis for theobservation?

• What context is needed tounderstand the class session?Where are we in the scheduleof the semester? How doesthis topic fit within the con-text of other topics? Howdoes it relate to what was dis-cussed the day or week beforeand what is planned to follow?

• What were your goals for thisday? Did the class session goas planned or deviate fromyour expectations? How so?Why? Did you change direc-tion to take advantage of somenew opportunity, get aroundan obstacle, deal with a newcircumstance?

• What does this session sayabout your teaching? Does itshow a characteristic style? Adistinctive approach to materi-al? Would others in your fieldbe likely to teach this topic/concept/whatever differently?Are you trying somethingnew? Something you will con-tinue to work at and improve?Do you like what you see? u

6 Reflections

Beth Innocenti ManolescuCommunication Studies

Although in the communica-tion studies department we dis-cuss teaching in meetings at thelevel of area of specialization(organizational communication,public communication, and soon) and in bimonthly depart-mental faculty meetings, severalyears ago we noticed that ourmany responsibilities preventedus from reflecting upon the intel-lectual work of teaching for asignificant period of time withundivided attention on a depart-mental level. We decided that wecould do it only if we made timefor it and set it at a time whenour other burdens and passionswould not be so pressing. Oursolution: an annual facultyretreat. Each fall, about a weekbefore the new semester’s classmeetings begin or shortly after,we meet for a day or two—sometimes a weekday, sometimesa weekend—to discuss specificissues related to teaching andlearning. In what follows I willdiscuss how our three depart-ment teaching retreats cameabout and what we did, as wellas what they have meant to us.

As I mentioned, much of ourreflection upon teaching andlearning takes place among facul-ty members working in one ofthe areas of the field includingorganizational, interpersonal,intercultural, new technology,

and public.The retreatshave providedan opportunity to systematicallyreflect upon connections amongareas and the challenges and suc-cesses we have had teachingundergraduate and graduate stu-dents and assessing their learn-ing. Each retreat has had a different focus. The firstaddressed issues related to teach-ing and learning for undergradu-ate students. The second focusedon the same issues as related tograduate students. Our mostrecent focused on assessment.

Undergraduate retreatWe tried to systematically ana-

lyze and resolve issues aboutundergraduate teaching andlearning that surfaced during fac-ulty meetings by holding aretreat. At the retreat, facultymembers received a stack ofindex cards, and on each cardthey wrote one issue regardingundergraduate education in ourdepartment that they felt neededto be addressed. We collectedthe cards/issues into a single pileand organized them into themes.We then decided which weremost important and began devel-oping potential solutions forthem. Among the key themes toemerge were that students inhigher level courses were not

Reflections on Retreats: Time for Considering theIntellectual Work of Teaching

Reflections 7

always well prepared by lowerlevel courses, that students didnot have a clear sense of how themajor fit together, and that toomany students decided theywanted to be majors withoutknowing what we teach. Wedecided that one solution was tocreate COMS 104, Introductionto Communication Studies, acollaboratively prepared surveyof the field that would introducestudents to the major, help themsee connections among thedepartment’s courses, and bebetter prepared for higher levelcourses. Since this idea had beendiscussed before but never imple-mented, the remainder of theretreat focused on how thecourse would be developed.Following one semester, thecourse was taught and has beentaught every semester since then.

The course has been truly col-laborative. Faculty members havecontributed lesson plans and vis-ited the class to discuss topics intheir areas of expertise. In eachsemester in which it has beenoffered, a different faculty mem-ber has served as instructor. Dueto the number of studentsenrolling in it—rising from 30 inits first semester to 122 thissemester and still growing—wenow employ a graduate teachingassistant. Faculty members whoteach and have taught the coursemeet to discuss assignments andcontinue to work with a collabo-ratively-developed syllabus andcourse materials. The course hasreceived positive student evalua-tions. Students report that theyappreciate the course and that itis meeting our goals of introduc-ing the major, integrating thedifferent areas of the depart-ment, and preparing them forhigher level courses.

Graduate retreatThe impetus for the graduate

retreat was the same song, sec-ond verse: in faculty meetings weregularly shared some of ourproblems and successes withgraduate teaching and learningand thought that we couldrepeat the positive outcomes ofthe undergraduate retreat withone focusing on the graduateprogram. This retreat was a two-day affair. On the first day, facul-ty members generated a list ofissues regarding the graduateprogram that they believed need-ed to be addressed. On the sec-ond day, Carol Nalbandian, aprofessional facilitator, led thediscussion on what we likedabout the program, what neededto be improved, and what pro-grams and initiatives could bedeveloped to address problems.In the area of graduate studentteaching and learning, we con-curred that our discipline expectsdoctoral students to graduatewith publications (difficult duein part to the lack of large, fund-ed team projects), graduate stu-dents needed assistance makingresearch presentations, and theirproficiency in research methodsneeded to be strengthened.

One initiative that we devel-oped to address these issues wasa department-wide research col-loquium. Three faculty membersagreed to lead it. Because wewanted to continue to fostertwo-way communication withgraduate students, two differentgraduate students each year alsoparticipated in organizing andrunning the colloquia. All facultymembers regularly attended col-loquia and sometimes presentedtheir own work. At each monthlymeeting we typically heard twograduate student presentations:

one using social scientific meth-ods and one using rhetoricalmethods. To date at least two ofthe graduate student presenta-tions have been published.

We refined this initiative as werealized that the challenges fac-ing students working from asocial science perspective weredifferent from those workingfrom a humanistic perspective.We replaced the department col-loquia with more specialized,intense efforts to assist graduatestudents in preparing their workfor submission to academic jour-nals. We initiated two new pro-grams—the Social ScienceJournal Club and RhetoricWriting Workshop—designed tohelp graduate students developresearch projects begun in cours-es into journal submissions.

The Social Science JournalClub met every two weeks, andall graduate students were invitedto participate. Participants firstcompleted an evaluation of themanuscript they would workthrough during the meetings soJoann Keyton, the faculty facili-tator, would have informationabout their needs and be able touse her experiences as aresearcher and editor of a nation-al journal to help students meetthem. She provided examples ofpublished research and createdshort writing guides. Studentswere responsible for establishinga plan of writing for their manu-script, demonstrating progress ateach meeting, and giving feed-back to one or more students ateach meeting. Because social sci-ence often requires intercoderreliability, participants also usedthe time to code data for thosewho needed it.

The Rhetoric WritingWorkshop meets about every

8 Reflections

month during the academic yearto workshop one or two gradu-ate student papers. Since researchin rhetoric tends to be single-authored, faculty and studentsagreed that a workshop formatwould be appropriate. Authorspost papers on BlackBoard atleast a week in advance, and par-ticipants write comments on themanuscripts. At meetings, theauthor briefly introduces his orher paper, reads one paragraph,and then is a “fly on the wall” asparticipants discuss the draft.

The author may then questionparticipants. We expect this ini-tiative to enhance graduate stu-dents’ research presentations andresult in publications.

Assessment retreatOur most recent retreat

focused on assessing undergradu-ate teaching and learning. Wedecided that this was an appro-priate topic because on an indi-vidual level, we want to know ifstudents are learning what we’retrying to teach. On a departmen-tal level, we want to be able toshow external audiences whatour courses equip students to do.

Since I was directly involved inplanning this, I can say a fewwords about that process. It tooktime and effort but not an inor-dinate amount of either. Ourdepartment’s administrative stafftook care of reserving a room,ordering food, and gatheringsupplies. I spoke with DanBernstein about who we couldinvite to facilitate the discussion

and what we could do. Althoughbringing in an assessment expertwas too expensive, Dan offeredguidelines about what we coulddo and how. I then met with sev-eral colleagues to try to tailorthese guidelines to our needs andparticularly to the fact that theentire faculty would be meetingas a group. We wanted to pro-vide people with some ideasabout what they could do intheir individual courses, but wealso wanted to focus on accom-plishing something that we could

do only as a department. Wethought we could first generatedepartment teaching and learn-ing goals, break into smallergroups based on our areas to dis-cuss ways of assessing whetherthe goals were being achieved,then return to the large group toshare what we had discussed.

This was an ambitious plan.We covered some of the basics ofassessment: setting learning goalsand identifying student perfor-mances where we can see if goalsare being achieved. But we spentthe rest of the time reflecting oncourse, area, and departmentalgoals. First each of us thoughtabout the one or two undergrad-uate classes that we frequentlyteach and took a few minutes toindividually generate goals forthe courses. Faculty members ineach area met in small groups togenerate a set of area goals whichwe wrote on flip charts. Eachgroup then walked around theroom and read the other groups’goals. We taped each area’s goals

to a wall at the front of the roomand from this generated a list ofdepartment goals.

We recognized that we wouldneed to continue to refine thislist, so following the retreat wecirculated a document that sum-marized each area’s goals anddepartment goals. We alsoreflected on potential uses wecould make of our reflections.Not only would they help us tothink about assessment in ourindividual classes but would alsohelp with departmental assess-ment and attract students withappropriate interests to the com-munication studies major.

Although each of our retreatshas produced tangible results,the less tangible results also helpus to sustain a department cul-ture that values teaching excel-lence. At these annual retreats wesee our colleagues from all areasof the department and from allcareer stages voluntarily commit-ting a full day or two, not toteaching activities as such but toreflection upon the intellectualwork involved in teaching. Weenact core departmental values aswe collaboratively reflect uponthis work. We see that despiteand perhaps because of ourmethodological and other differ-ences, we can come together tothink and share ideas about howto achieve common pedagogicalgoals. The retreats have providedus with a time and space toreflect upon our teaching prac-tices—something that it is diffi-cult to do individually but, without the retreats, would beimpossible to do as a departmentcommunity with shared valuesand a shared commitment toteaching excellence. u

Although each of our retreats has produced tangibleresults, the less tangible results also help us to sustaina department culture that values teaching excellence.

Reflections 9

Elizabeth FriisMechanical Engineering

Quite frankly, I was a skeptic.An online course portfolio forreflection about teaching? In mymind, I had already “reflected”on my course: what I taught andhow the science content mightbe updated was very importantto me. I started an online courseportfolio for my Biomaterialsclass as a required task for theCTE Faculty Seminar in which Iwas participating. In many ways,I approached this assignment likesome of my engineering under-graduate students do the home-work I assign, just jumping overa hurdle that has to be overcometo get to the seminar series ofinteresting discussions with mycolleagues. As I was “jumping,”little did I realize that the work Iwas doing would be so helpful inthe coming years.

In the Faculty Seminar, ourfirst step in approaching portfo-lio development was to exploreexamples from other faculty atdifferent institutions in similarareas. Even after looking at otheronline portfolios, it was stillunclear how this exercise wouldbe of benefit to me. In formingthe first draft of my portfolio, Ijust cut and pasted from otherdocuments, such as my coursesyllabus, an abstract I had writ-ten for a conference, and myproject assignment descriptions.I did some new writing, but it

was minimal. I made the portfo-lio like I make research postersto present at scientific confer-ences. I didn’t reflect much; Iwrote an introduction, methods,results, and discussion. My“assignment” was finished—mymission accomplished. The firstdraft of the course portfolio wasdone, without much extra effort(or true reflection) from me.

To my surprise, several monthslater Ann Volin of the CTE staffcontacted me about improvingand adding to that initial portfo-lio. This time, I was given anoutline of categories that Annhad developed to organize whatI wrote previously and to guideme along the way. Since I wasteaching the course again thecoming semester, I thought itwould be good to organize mythoughts.

As I started to write sections, Ibegan to think more about myclass and how it was structured.I had expended a great deal ofeffort to set up the course origi-nally, and I had spent a lot oftime revising and improving iteach of the three times I taughtit. I had even made an educationpresentation about this differentstyle of course at a nationalresearch conference. But as Ibegan to write more about it inthe CTE format, I realized that Ihadn’t really looked back very

10 Reflections

Convergence

often to think about my stu-dents’ performance or progressthroughout the semester. I wasso focused on what I taught thatI often didn’t look enough atwhat and how my students actu-ally learned through their assign-ments. Were assignments helpfulto students? Did the quality oftheir work actually improve dur-ing the semester? Did I know ifstudents realized what definedquality in their work?

Writing sections in response toAnn’s prompts probably took meabout one full day to complete.At first, I had difficulty seeingthe three-dimensional nature ofthe portfolio; I couldn’t quitesee the end result and how it

would all fit together on the website. Ann guided me through thisstage with ease. She took what Iwrote, edited it, and put ittogether in an appropriate for-mat. As she questioned me, Ibegan to look more at studentoutcomes in my course and start-ed to reflect about how I struc-tured the course and how students progressed through thesemester in response to this orga-nization. She helped me look atmy course in a different way.

Ann asked me for examples ofprevious student work in thecourse, examples of high, aver-age, and low quality. Yes, I hadgiven these assignments gradesthat should reflect quality, but asI picked out and examined theworks a year after they weregraded, I realized I had neverdemonstrated to the students

these quality differences. I knowquality when I see it, but did mystudents know, as well? I givestudents mostly open-endedquestions where there is no oneright answer; as engineering stu-dents, most were at first takenaback to find that these ques-tions could not be answered byone correct number with a boxaround it at the end of the solu-tion. Had I ever given studentsexamples of different levels ofquality work or taken the time towrite out descriptions of whatmakes a quality homeworkassignment or project researchproposal? Perhaps the lower per-forming students were not evenaware of the standards levels.

Perhaps just like me when firststarting to write the onlinecourse portfolio, they couldn’tsee how to approach open-endedquestions and produce qualityresults.

CTE staff members asked forshort responses to their prompts,they then did most of the workin formatting and editing. Theirquestions were structured tohelp lead me through a thoughtprocess of reflection of qualitywork and demonstration of thatquality through examples andwritten description. By the endof this process, the CTE staff putthese snippets into a form thatactually made sense! Only oneprompt required significanteffort from me; Ann requestedthat I write a rubric demonstrat-ing levels of quality work for themajor project of writing an NIH-

style research proposal in place ofa traditional term paper. Since Iwas teaching the Biomaterialscourse again that semester, Idecided to take the time to writethe rubric.

As I formulated the rubric, Ibegan to realize just how muchof my personal professional expe-rience went into determining thequality of my students’ work andhence their grades on the projectproposals. I had reviewed variousstyles of grant proposals fornational organizations for overseven years—how could studentsunderstand the quality criteria bywhich I review without me giv-ing them a full multi-page NIH-style review? Unfortunately, thistype of feedback is prohibitivelytime consuming for a class of 22students. Even then, as most ofus know from our own researchproposal reviews, commentsfrom long critiques of our workare difficult to fully comprehendwhen they criticize the proposalin which one has invested a lotof time and energy.

Instead of giving intense for-mal feedback to each studentteam, I decided to invest moretime into developing the rubric.Since I was teaching theBiomaterials course that semes-ter, I also gave this rubric out tomy students and reviewed it withthem before they started workon writing the grant proposals.The rubric was intended toguide the students throughdevelopment of the research pro-posal, to give examples of howquality was influenced by specificchoices and forms of informationpresentation. Perhaps it wasrelated, perhaps not, but thequality of proposal projectsappeared to improve significantlythat semester.

Reflections 11

I was so focused on what I taught that I often didn’tlook enough at what and how my students actuallylearned through their assignments.

Every time I have worked withthe CTE staff on developingaspects of the online course port-folio, I have learned and havebeen able to incorporate thatawareness into my courses. I’musing the rubric again now inanother graduate course; it willsave me time, as well as againgive students a sense of quality indeveloping their class researchproposals. Though I have a life-time to go in learning how tobecome a better instructor, Inow think more about how stu-dents might perceive qualityresults in their assignments andhow students at all levels canbetter learn how to improve theprofessional quality of theirwork.

My Biomaterials course portfo-lio is far from perfect. I couldspend many hours making itcontinuously better—but I don’thave that time. Few, if any, facul-ty members do. However, in justthe limited time I have spentthinking about this course andhelping CTE put together theportfolio for me, I have learned alot about myself and my studentsthrough this process of truereflection. I can only imagine themultitude of downstream effectson my teaching in this class aswell as in all others after workingthrough the process of makingmy thoughts explicit.

Has working on the portfoliomade me a better instructor?Hopefully. Has it affected theway in which I think about stu-dents’ learning and so helped meprovide a better learning envi-ronment for my students?Definitely. I now have a tool thatcan be easily updated and usedfrom year-to-year to give me aninstitutional memory of studentoutcomes for this course. I can

share my experiences and ideaswith colleagues from around theworld. Later this spring I amscheduled to give a presentationat a national meeting about theunique way I structure thiscourse. I will share this portfoliowith pride about how KU helpstheir faculty members strive forexcellence in our fundamentaldirective of educating students. Ilook forward to the time whenmore people in my area developtheir own online portfolios and Ican learn from their examples tocontinuously work on andimprove my own courses. u

12 Reflections

"But the greatest thing byfar is to have a command ofmetaphor. This alone cannot be imparted byanother; it is the mark ofgenius, for to makegood metaphors implies aneye for resemblances."

—Aristotle, Poetics

I am the kind of person whoprefers to kill two birds with onestone. When Dan Bernsteinasked me to write on my use ofmetaphor and analogy in myadvanced statistics courses, Ithought I’d take advantage ofthe opportunity to actually askmy students whether using themaided in their understanding.

Metaphors can be quite com-plex, ranging from computermetaphors for understandinghuman cognition to simpleclichés such as “a bird in thehand is twice as good as two inthe bush.” They can come inmixed forms as well, such as “astone in the hand will trumptwo birds formerly of the bush.”And regardless of whether theattempt at metaphor, analogy, orsimile is technically a metaphor,analogy, or simile is less impor-tant than the basic discoverythat I have made in my 20 yearsof teaching advanced, mathe-matically based concepts; name-ly, a good metaphor is worth athousand numbers, equations,and formulae.

I use terms like metaphor andanalogy loosely. I am generallytrying to capture the idea ofmaking a comparison, such aswhen a well-understood word,

Reflections 13

ΣΣgg ==

ΛΛgg

Thought Candy:Metaphor in Education

Musings of Todd D. Little, PsychologyEnhanced by some current students

ΦΦgg

ΛΛ’’gg

++ΘΘgg

phrase, concept, or image thatordinarily designates one thing isused in reference to another.Such comparisons are drawn inorder to show a similarity insome respect, usually under theassumption that if things agree insome respects, they probablyagree in others.

Perhaps the most demandingcourse that I teach is StructuralEquation Modeling (SEM; PSYC991, n = 21 this semester). SEMis a second generation family ofstatistical procedures thatinvolves a lot of mathematicallybased concepts and ideas.1 Ahandful of students will instantlyresonate with the material pre-sented in footnote 1. Most stu-dents (and I expect many of thereaders of this essay), on theother hand, would find thismaterial bewildering at best andmore likely beyond comprehen-sion. My struggle as a teacher of such material has always beento figure out ways to make theconcepts and issues that sur-round them accessible to themath phobic.

As a graduate student, I took acourse on the general use ofmetaphor in science. It struckme that drawing such parallelsamong things that exist innature, or “kinds,” the preciseterms created to capture theessence of the “kinds,” and the

imprecise (but rich-by-analogy)metaphors used to represent therelations between them, mightbe beneficial in my teaching.One clearly runs the risk ofimprecision and, but with rareexception, all good metaphorseventually fall apart. However, agood metaphor or analogy tapsexisting knowledge structuresabout how a set of things relate,thereby aiding in learning theprecise “term” for the “kind”and the relational nature amongthe “terms” for the “kinds.”

Back to bird hunting withstones, I was particularly pleasedto get the following responses tomy query. This first responsecaptures the scaffolding ideawhen introducing impreciseterms as proxies of the precise(which in turn reflect the mathe-matical underpinnings):

“One of the first things Inoticed about your lecturesfrom the onset was your useof concrete examples andanalogies. This was especiallyuseful in the initial lectures inwhich you described whatSEM was all about. Also Inoticed in your earlier lecturesyou used very little SEM ter-minology and more analogieswhich I think helped to lay afoundation for the uses andpurposes of SEM. Later, Inoticed you started pairing the

analogies along with the ter-minology used in SEM. Whenused in tandem, it providesstudents with multiple avenuesfor understanding. For exam-ple, if one student does notunderstand the technicalterms/description, at least shecan still grasp the basics of thelecture. Not all students cometo the class with the same levelof understanding and back-ground so analogies help toput all students on the sameplaying field, so to speak.”There are very few times when

PowerPoint and its animationcapabilities actually enhance alecture. However, when carefullyconsidered and applied, visualmetaphors (animated or not) canbe tremendously helpful. StudentB captures this idea. This studentalso captures well my reasons forusing metaphor and analogy inconveying math intensive con-cepts to the “less-mathematicallyinclined”:

“I’ve never had a stats teacheruse metaphors to explain keyconcepts. Instead, they havealways thrown a formula atme. I am a little math-phobicand when I see a really com-plicated formula, I usuallydrift off. I much prefer tothink of things at the concep-tual level and metaphors canbe very helpful in understand-

14 Reflections

1 For example, multiple group mean and covariance structures models would begin with the matrix algebra notations for the gen-eral factor model, which, for multiple populations g=1,2 .. G, is represented by:

xg = τg + Λg ξg + δg (1)E(xg) = µxg = τg + Λg κg (2)Σg = Λg Φg Λ’

g + Θg (3)where x is a vector of observed or manifest indicators, ξ is a vector of latent constructs, τ is a vector of intercepts of the manifestindicators, Λ is the factor pattern or loading matrix of the indicators, κ represents the means of the latent constructs, Φ is thevariance-covariance matrix of the latent constructs, and Θ is a symmetric matrix with the variances of the error terms along thediagonal and possible covariances among the residuals in the off diagonal. All of the parameter matrices are subscripted with a gto indicate that the parameters may take different values in each population. For the common factor model, we assume that theindicators (i.e., items, parcels, scales, responses, etc.) are continuous variables that are multivariate normal in the population andthe elements of Θ have a mean of zero and are independent of the estimated elements in the other parameter matrices (see Littleand Slegers, 2005).

ing concepts, even if I don’tcompletely understand themath behind it all. Given theconceptual nature of SEM,your metaphors have helpedme to grasp its basic princi-ples. Perhaps the most helpfulmetaphor has been the exam-ple of the three-legged stool.If you had given me just themath of why three indicatorsof a construct are more stablethan four indicators, I doubt Iwould have gotten it. I proba-bly still don’t completely getthe math, but I understandthe principle at a conceptuallevel. The use of visual

metaphors has also beenextremely helpful. Themetaphor of the construct as acircle with a centroid hashelped me visualize the con-cepts of measurement errorand triangulating around theconstruct centroid. Thesedemonstrations have also beenhelpful in literally seeing therelationship between reliabilityand validity in a new way.Seeing the concepts allowedme to ease my way into theclass and tackle the math laterwith more of a conceptualbackground. Honestly, if thefirst day was all formulas andno metaphors, I am not sure Iwould have stuck with theclass.”Student C and D capture per-

haps one of the key reasons whyI think metaphors work so wellin my courses; namely, they give

the student something richer tohang the ideas on:

“Your teaching style makesthings very visual and putscomplicated concepts into thecommon English language.It’s as if the metaphors andanalogies point to a familiarcognitive framework that canbe used to make sense of farless familiar, complicated sta-tistical concepts.”

and more than one way tounderstand the concepts:

“I like analogies in general,and in multivariate statisticsclasses specifically… I thinkpresenting things in more than

one way helps students wholearn differently better under-stand the concepts.”Some metaphors work better

than others and some work bet-ter for some people in differentways, but I was also very pleasedto see that some of thesemetaphors might actually prolif-erate and help others learn someof the key concepts of the area:

“The water in the ice cubetray metaphor worked verywell for me today. I also actu-ally used your pinning down acloud analogy to a friend ofmine who is also taking SEM(not here). I did not do it jus-tice, but it seemed to havesunk in with her.”In SEM, we attempt to repre-

sent latent constructs fromnumerous measured indicators.The latent construct is like afloating cloud. To measure it and

quantify it, one simply defines apoint somewhere in the cloud topin it down. Once pinned down,one can measure from that pointto the edges of the cloud andquantify it. The point where themeasurements are taken is arbi-trary. You simply need to pick apoint and pin it down. This ana-log roughly communicates theoften difficult concept of settingthe scale of measurement for alatent construct.

Turning to the final studentcomment, this student empha-sizes the point that one cannotsurvive on metaphor alone (andthe point that even the mathable like them):

“I don’t think analogies cansubstitute completely formath. I am more of a math-oriented learner than verbal.So while the analogies help,the math helps me understandconcepts just as much. Iwouldn’t want to see mathreplaced completely withanalogies and metaphors.”As for how I find metaphors, I

don’t know if it’s just a gift(which I doubt) or if it’s just astraight forward process of whenyou want one, it will come toyou. I suspect that many readersof this essay will find thatmetaphors are rather easy tocome by if they decide to tryusing them (visual or verbal) aspart of their curriculum content.I also suspect that you will findyour students to be favorablyinclined. Think of them asthought candy. u

Reference:Little, T. D., and Slegers, D. W. (2005).Factor analysis: Multiple groups. In B.Everitt & D. Howell (Eds.), & D.Rindskopf (Section Ed.), Encyclopedia ofStatistics in Behavioral Science (Vol. 2,pp 617-623). Chichester, UK: Wiley.

Reflections 15

One of the key reasons why I think metaphors work sowell in my courses … [is that] they give the studentsomething richer to hang the ideas on … and morethan one way to understand the concepts.

Michael S. VitevitchPsychology

The conundrum of how to getundergraduate students to pur-sue graduate studies in a fieldthat they don’t know even existsforced me to examine what I wasdoing in the classroom to makestudents aware of and interestedin pursuing graduate work incognitive science. Cognitive sci-ence is an interdisciplinary areathat draws together researchersfrom disciplines like anthropolo-gy, computer science, education,engineering, informatics, linguis-tics, philosophy, psychology, andspeech-language-hearing sciencesto investigate questions aboutthe mind, brain, and behavior.Many universities in the US andaround the world have formalcognitive science programs thatprovide the kind of cross-discipli-nary training that will enablefuture scientists to integrate theindividual puzzle pieces we arediscovering now and to under-stand how the parts interact witheach other to form a complex,working whole. Although thereare several cross-disciplinary pro-grams of study at KU (e.g., childlanguage, gerontology, neuro-science), these training programsare for graduate students, notundergraduates. It wasn’t clearto me how undergraduate stu-dents would decide to pursuetheir education as graduate stu-dents on the cutting edge of thecognitive sciences if, when theywere undergraduates, they didn’tknow that such a field existed.

The examination of my own

classroom habits resulted in avery disappointing discovery:despite being someone whoreceived this sort of cross-disci-plinary training myself, I wasn’t“preaching” what I was “practic-ing.” Even though I employ avariety of methodologies anddraw from several differentapproaches in my own researchon spoken language, I found thatI wasn’t really incorporating thatmethodological variety or evencultivating an appreciation forthe diversity of methods that Iemployed in my own work in thestudents that I was teaching inPSYC 104, General Psychology.It was about this time that I firstdiscovered Thematic LearningCommunities (TLCs) at KU,and wondered if I might be ableto use the TLC experience to getundergraduate students interest-ed in cognitive science.

Making connectionsIn most TLCs at KU, a group

of first-year students enrolltogether in two courses thataddress a broader theme or idea.The connection between thecourses is elaborated on in a one-hour seminar through discus-sions, field trips, guest speakersand other extracurricular activi-ties that don’t readily fit into theclassroom. Many TLCs give stu-dents who are already interestedin a specific major an exposure toissues that might not beaddressed in the more traditionalcurriculum. For example, pre-

How Do You Get the Freshmen of Today to Become the Graduate Students of Tomorrow?

16 Reflections

business majors might enroll incourses paired together in theTLC entitled Brazil: Businessand Society to learn about thelanguage and culture of what ispredicted to be one of the largestmarkets of the future. Pre-lawstudents in the Law and SocietyTLC learn how various courtrulings have affected society andhow society has influenced thelegal system. Engineering stu-dents in The Leading Edge TLCmight consider moral and ethicalimplications of something theymight build rather than just howto build it. It was obvious thatthe TLC experience helped

freshmen see their first semesteras something more than thesemester they were enrolled incourse X, or fulfilled requirementZ. It helped orient students tothe concept of “general educa-tion” by exposing them toimportant issues with implica-tions that reached beyond theone course in which they learnedabout that issue.

I wondered, however, if a TLCcould also inspire first-year stu-dents to become scientific leadersin the future who would use avariety of methodologicalapproaches to understand several

levels of a problem,who would take theo-retical inspiration frommany fields, and whowould work with researchersfrom other domains to solve aproblem rather than become apsychologist, computer scientist,physicist, or some other “-ist”who would examine only onepiece of a significantly largerpuzzle. Could the seeds of cross-disciplinary research be plantedin the fresh, fertile minds of first-year students, take hold in a fewstudents here and there, andblossom into a new breed ofresearcher in the future?

To increase undergraduate stu-dents’ exposure to cognitive sci-ence, I worked with Linda Dixonin the Thematic LearningCommunity Office to developthe Mind, Brain, and BehaviorTLC. In this TLC, first-year stu-dents enroll in PSYC 104,General Psychology (with me asthe instructor), a one-hourbridging seminar, and one otherintroductory level course fromthe other disciplines that tradi-tionally comprise the cognitivesciences: anthropology, computerscience, linguistics, philosophy,or speech-language-hearing.

During the bridging seminar,we visited different laboratoriesacross campus, including theDevelopmental NeurolinguisticsLab directed by Mabel Rice inSPLH where we learned how anelectroencephalograph—a devicethat measures tiny electricalpotentials on the scalp producedby the “firing” of cells in thebrain called neurons—could beused to obtain precise measuresof how and when spoken lan-guage is comprehended. Inanother seminar I brought in anArtificial Neural Network(ANN), a computer programthat mimics how the humanbrain processes information. Thebrain consists of many simple,highly interconnected cells (neu-rons) that produce different pat-terns of electrical activity (whichcan be measured by an electroen-cephalograph) to give us ourconscious experiences. Like thebrain, an ANN is a computerprogram comprised of many sim-ple yet highly interconnectedunits that process information.These programs have been usedto model and better understandvarious cognitive processes.

In other seminars I showedvideotapes of individuals withvarious neurological disorders togive TLC students a better ideaof what it might be like to havesustained damage to part of their

Reflections 17

Could the seeds of cross-disciplinary research be planted in the fresh, fertile minds of first-year students, take hold in a few students here and there,and blossom into a new breed of researcher?

n of Today nts of Tomorrow?

brain involved in short-termmemory or in recognizing facesof people they know. Guestspeakers also visited the seminarto talk about their work examin-ing how children learn languageor of studies employing function-al magnetic resonance imagingto identify which part of thebrain is involved in performing agiven cognitive process. In Fall2004, students also went to theLied Center for the HumanitiesLecture Series presentation bySteven Pinker, a cognitive psy-chologist at Harvard University.

Through these experiences—some of which could not havebeen done in a traditional class-room—TLC students were ableto see that something theylearned in one class actually canapply to another. More impor-tantly, they were exposed to coredisciplines of cognitive scienceand developed an appreciation ofhow big the questions are thatscientists study; only with coop-eration among scientists frommany disciplines could thesequestions be answered.

In my most recent TLC class,I wanted to more explicitly showrelationships among differentdisciplines of cognitive scienceand, more broadly, relationshipsamong other KU courses,between the classroom and thereal world, and between theoryand practice. To help illustratehow everything is connected, inthe seminar we spent part of thesemester reading the bookLinked: The new science of net-works, by Albert-László Barabási.In Linked, Barabási describeshow networks consisting ofnodes and links can be used tohelp us understand the underly-ing structure that exists amongnumerous, interacting entities.

Nodes in the networks representindividual entities, perhaps peo-ple, cities, or countries, and linksconnect two nodes if they arerelated in some fashion, perhapspeople who know each other,cities that have airline flightsbetween them, or countries thatengage in economic trade.Different types of structures thatemerge from interactions amongentities have significant implica-tions for the efficiency and stabil-ity of the underlying system.

During one of the seminars Iillustrated how this so-called newscience of networks—populatedprimarily by physicists, computerscientists, mathematicians, andengineers—influenced my ownpsychological research on lan-guage processing and resulted inseveral new discoveries in my lab.Words stored in memory arelinked together in an elaborateand stable network, much likenetworks that characterize airlinetravel and other complex systemsin the real world. By using thesemathematical techniques, we canbetter describe how the wordswe know are organized in thatpart of memory we call the men-tal lexicon. Seeing that mathe-matics had something importantto say about psychology alsohelped TLC students discoverthat there could (and should) beconnections among the otherclasses they will enroll in while atKU, not just among courses thatconstitute the cognitive sciences.By making connections explicitamong concepts, theories, or,more broadly speaking, othercourses in the university, thesestudents could now use thatframework as a model to helpthem discover other relationshipsand to build their own efficientand stable knowledge structures.

Encouraging signsAlthough I’ve planted the

seeds for cognitive science overthe past few years in severalcohorts through the Mind,Brain, and Behavior TLC, it isstill too early to point to amature, new breed of researcher.However, I am encouragedknowing that these ideas havetaken hold in a few students.Two previous MBB students arecurrently participating in the KUBioSciences Initiative, a federally-funded program that promotesdiversity in biomedical research.One student is mentored byHolly Storkel in SPLH, the otherby Monica Biernat in psychology,and both are working on honorstheses for their programs.Another former MBB studenthas worked in my lab the pastthree years (most students don’tbecome involved in researchexperiences until their senioryear) and is now completing anhonors thesis in psychology. Ihave also run into other TLCstudents at faculty colloquy andthe Undergraduate ResearchSymposium. Granted, it is diffi-cult to know if the experiencesthese students had in the TLCcaused them to pursue theseadditional experiences in the firstplace, or to pursue them earlierthan they might have otherwise,but the nurturing environmentprovided by the TLC programcertainly couldn’t have hurt. Ihope the Mind, Brain, andBehavior and other TLCs, likeWomen in Science, can continueto nourish the minds of our first-year students and help manymore blossom and mature. u

For more on Thematic LearningCommunities at KU, seehttp://www.tlc.ku.edu.

18 Reflections

Ann Cudd Philosophy/Women’s Studies

I envy athletic coaches andtheatre directors for the enor-mous efforts they can coax fromour students. Students seem tobe willing sacrifice their leisuretime, their health, and theirother coursework (including mycourses) for those activities with-out a second thought. Rarelydoes a student say to me, “I toldmy coach that I couldn’t go topractice until I finished thatpaper on Kant’s argument forthe categorical imperative. I justhad to get it right.” But coachesand directors regularly get everylast ounce of physical energy andemotional enthusiasm out oftheir students. They can expectthat level of effort. Coaches cantell their player to get on thetreadmill at top speed for 30 sec-onds, or directors can rage abouthow actors are performing ascene, demanding attentionwhen it wanders even slightlyfrom the goal. Imagine the head-lines if a philosophy professortold her students to “give me50” pushups or shouted at themthat they were not passionateenough every time they revealedthat they had not really tried tounderstand the assigned read-ings!

Why this difference in effort,enthusiasm, and commitment? Ican think of at least three reasonsthat are not directly related to

my inadequacies as a teacher:first, students can very quicklysee how their efforts make a dif-ference in their performance;second, they create their productwith other people; third, they getto use their whole person inthose activities, that is, their bod-ies as well as their minds. Inshort, students want to do as wellas think; they want to see con-crete results beyond a pile ofpapers they have written; theywant to talk, laugh, cry, andsweat over their work. This sortof reflection led me to wonderwhether service learning mighthelp me to enthuse my students.If scholarly work could involvestudents’ physical selves to agreater degree, perhaps theywould generate the same level ofenthusiasm for my courses as forathletics or theatre.

For several years I thoughtabout adding service learning tothe curricula of programs that Iwas a part of, but as one voice inthose units, the idea never wentanywhere. Then it struck me thatI could just do it myself in myown course. After all, I am a fullprofessor. About the same timethe opportunity to learn some-thing more about service learn-ing arose through a “ServiceLearning Institute” offered byCTE. So I applied and startedto think about what to do.

The Body in the Mind:Energizing PhilosophyThrough Service

Reflections 19

I chose to add a service com-ponent to a course I have taughtfive times in my years at KU withfive completely different sets ofreadings. It is not that I havenever been happy with it, butrather that there are too manypossible topics and I have want-ed to explore different ones atdifferent times. Feminism andPhilosophy is now a cross-listedcourse for each of my two acade-mic homes: philosophy andwomen’s studies, and it enrollsapproximately equal numbers ofstudents from each unit. Thiscourse was the right course totry a service learning componentin for several reasons: the materi-al is more applied than the usualphilosophy course (consider:logic or metaphysics—what ser-vice would be appropriate tothose topics?!), many of the stu-dents (i.e., the women’s studiesstudents) are likely to be goinginto service- or policy- orientedprofessions, and it is a coursethat I continually try to improvewith new and different teachingmethods. It is a course I love, itenrolls well, the students comein enthusiastic, but somehow Ialways feel that they go out a lit-tle less enthusiastic than theycame in. The Service LearningInstitute allowed me to thinkthrough the details of setting upa service experience for the stu-dents and brainstorm with otherfaculty about what kinds of ser-vice would be appropriate, howto implement it, and how toevaluate it.

As a philosopher, I am drawnfirst to respond to skeptics.Skeptics about service learningquestion the relevance of volun-teer work to abstract conceptsthat students should be studyingin good, rigorous classes. They

wonder whether there is anyvalid monitoring of students’work and reflection in serviceprojects. They challenge instruc-tors to demonstrate the learningin service learning through actualevidence. I set out to meet thesechallenges with the serviceassignments for the course.

Obvious places to volunteer ina Feminism and Philosophy classare the local rape crisis centerand the domestic violence shel-ter. These places require a veryserious commitment of time byvolunteers, because they must gothrough a long training periodand commit to serving for anumber of hours that justifiesthat investment in training.These would be great places forfeminist philosophy students toserve, but they require a kind ofcommitment that I didn’t feel Icould ask of everyone. Since themain topic of feminist philoso-phy is the meaning, construc-tion, and effects of gender forindividuals and society, it wasnatural to send students to doservice where gender is devel-oped and honed. Thus I contact-ed agencies that serve children indaycares and schools, asking ifthey could use some help. Ofcourse they could, but the kindof work to be done would betucking children in at nap time,mopping up spilled juice, hang-ing out with girls and boys in theschool lunchroom, or watchingchildren play and study in after-school programs. So some ser-vice opportunities would beintense but obviously connected,others would be more laid backand require more reflection toconnect. Still, all were relevant tounderstanding how the conceptof gender plays out in life. Withthis set of agencies for volunteer-

ing, I thought that I had success-fully met the skeptic’s first challenge of relevance.

The second challenge, moni-toring effort and reflection, wasmore difficult. To address it, Iassigned the students to not onlyperform the service required bythe agency, but also to observethe construction of gender (andrace and class) at the volunteersite, write about what theyobserved in journals they keptfor each volunteer session, andthen design an activity to engagetheir agency’s clients in ways thatwould address gender and/orracial issues in a creative, pro-gressive, and provocative man-ner. I sent them to the SouthernPoverty Law Center’s TeachingTolerance web site1 for ideas onhow to do this. The journalsallowed some monitoring by meand facilitated students’ reflec-tion. I followed up with supervi-sors on attendance, to checkagainst their journal entries.Finally, I asked students to makeexplicit connections to the read-ings in their final writeups oftheir projects. While there werevarying levels of quality of reflec-tion in their journals and finalwriteups, these assignments metthe challenge.

The final challenge, to gatherevidence and document thelearning in service learning, isone I have yet to fully meet. Idesigned the course as an experi-ment to test the hypothesis thatservice learning increases theunderstanding of the coursereading material as measuredthrough the grade on the finalexam. The course did notrequire all students to participatein service learning. They couldreplace the service learningassignments with additional

20 Reflections

philosophical essay assignments.Roughly half the students choseto do the service, and half to dothe essays; it broke down almostexactly along the lines of theenrollment: those who enrolledin the women’s studies numberchose service, those in the phi-losophy number chose essays.However, the results on the finalexam were inconclusive. I gradedthe exams and the essaysthroughout the course blindly byhaving the students provide onlystudent numbers as identifiers. Ifound that there was no statisti-cally significant difference ineither the grades on the finalexam or the final grades in thecourse between students whochose to do service and thosewho chose to do essays. Of

course, the results imply that stu-dents who chose service did noworse on the written final examthan students who did the tradi-tional academic work, and that initself says something about thequality of learning in service.

In addition to responding tothe skeptic’s challenges, therewas another outcome that I wassearching for—an increasedenthusiasm and commitment tothe course that I hoped servicelearning would generate in thestudents. This involves a veryqualitative judgment with anec-dotal evidence, yet I think theresults are clear. The studentswho participated in service wentfar beyond my requirements in

terms of time and efforts. Theymade phone calls and appoint-ments, introduced themselves tosupervisors, took charge ofgroups of children, took direc-tions from teachers and coun-selors, played with children,talked with children about bully-ing, race, poverty, class, sex,stereotypes, and more. Studentswho volunteered at the women’sshelter did more than three timesthe amount of service I requiredduring the term and committedto at least 100 more hours afterthe term ended. Some studentsdid follow up independent ser-vice learning courses. Some stu-dents took jobs at the placeswhere they had volunteeredbecause they enjoyed their workso much.

Then there were the final pro-jects and writeups. The studentsdesigned unbelievably creativeprojects that took many hours toprepare. One student had todesign something related to gen-der for toddlers who are justlearning language—not an easyassignment. So she designed andcreated large cut-outs of womenand men dressed for differentoccupations that ran counter togender stereotypes and propsthat would be appropriate forthose occupations, such as firefighters and their hose, hats, andhydrant; or a father and a babyand baby bottle; or a femalechef, a chef’s hat and a fryingpan. Then she played with the

children and asked them tomatch the props and headgearwith the people. The childrendisplayed a shocking amount ofgenderization already at theirtender ages. She caught theinteraction on film and made anelectronic poster about her expe-riences as a final writeup. Herproject poster, along with severalother projects, are posted on thewomen’s studies web site.2

The volunteers at the women’sshelter did the most creativePowerPoint slide show I haveever seen. It was animated andaccompanied by well chosenfeminist music. The images andexplanations documented thecycle of domestic violence,relayed statistics and theories,and provided lists of resourcesand a bibliography. It was sopowerful that the class wasspeechless for a few minutes afterthe presentation. I imagine thatthe slide show must have takenat least 40 hours to construct. Itcannot be displayed on our website because it is so large a file,but we played it at the women’sstudies banquet at the end of theyear, and it received a thunder-ous ovation.

The students who participatedin service learning became pas-sionate advocates for the peoplewith whom they worked. Theyinternalized the problems of sex-ism, bullying, racism, and pover-ty as I think students rarely dowhen they simply read aboutthese issues. The students betterunderstood how academiccoursework is connected to life.And, finally, the youthful enthu-siasm that I observed amongthese students was as real as anyI have seen on the playing fieldor the stage.

I have also been energized by

Reflections 21

The students better understood how academic course-work is connected to life. And the youthful enthusiasmthat I observed among these students was as real asany I have seen on the playing field or the stage.

22 Reflections

this experience. I am more com-mitted to adding service learningto appropriate courses in thefuture, and certainly to everyincarnation of Feminism andPhilosophy. Service learning isone way to ask as much from ourstudents as coaches ask fromthem, and to actually see stu-dents throw themselves into theircoursework with the same levelof enthusiasm that they expresson the field. u

References1http://www.tolerance.org2http://www.womensstudies.ku.edu/service_learning