In all of the courses taught by Jennifer Crissman Ishler, students experience an activity called "Diversity Circles." She's been using the activity for 14 years, in classes ranging from 20 to 150 students, and it's consistently mentioned positively in her SRTEs and other course feedback.

The rationale behind the activity is that it helps students deal more successfully with the diversity they will encounter in their classes, their residence halls, and their future careers. Crissman Ishler urges her students to listen and learn when exposed to diversity and to try to avoid making assumptions. While the activity seems like a natural for the counselor-education and human-development courses she teaches, she believes it can be useful in other courses as well, since students in any discipline will encounter diversity throughout their lives.

The activity goes something like this: Each student privately draws a circle, places his or her name inside, and then draws lines connecting to four smaller circles.

In each of the smaller circles, the students write down a trait that expresses who they are as a multicultural being--traits such as gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and so on. Crissman Ishler then asks the students to think about one of the circles they felt happy to be part of, as well as one circle where they've experienced awkwardness such as being singled out in a negative way by others. They share their feelings in small groups and, if they wish, with the larger class. Students play "break the stereotype" by stating "I am a _____________, but not a _________________." In the first blank, the students state a multicultural identity they embrace, while in the second blank they state a stereotype that doesn't fit them in relation to that identity.

Often the sharing time includes nervous laughter. Crissman Ishler helps the students process the experience, asking them: "Why are we laughing? What's awkward about this?" During the processing of the experience, students think about how language like "That's so gay" or "That's so retarded" can wound others--often without the speaker even knowing it, since many elements of identity are invisible.

The in-class processing of the activity is crucial. At the beginning, Crissman Ishler tells the students: "I'm going to put you on the spot today. It's about you--your interpersonal reflection. I'm asking you to share, to take risks." The point is to have fun, and also to learn. But she also sets ground rules so that the students can feel safe in their sharing: While there will be a variety of opinions, they must be expressed politely--and students are reminded that the information their classmates share is to remain confidential.

"I continue to use it because I think it's got great value," Crissman Ishler says. "It's something simple they can all relate to. With the right processing, it can lead to an aha! moment. It's the one thing that always stays in my curriculum."

If you'd like more information about the activity and how it might be adapted to your own teaching, please contact Jennifer Crissman Ishler at jxc51@psu.edu.

Since last fall, the SITE consultants have been offering office hours at a centralized location on the UP campus. Our intention in doing this was to encourage more "drop-in" consultations and we hoped that being centrally located would be an advantage. Most of the time during these office hours, we don't have many drop by for a visit. Through the years I have heard faculty say that students seldom take full advantage of office hours. I have wondered why that is when we know that faculty and student interactions have long been deemed essential to learning in higher education and have been noted not only "as a means by which the transmission of knowledge and student intellectual growth is best facilitated, but as an educational goal in and of itself" (Wilson & Woods, 1974).

While the SITE consultations are not the same as traditional faculty office hours, we do know that interpersonal interactions are beneficial. Thinking through and discussing instructional issues collaboratively with a consultant can help you to implement and evaluate changes in your classrooms.

Our doors are always open and we are looking for ways to make ourselves readily available to you. Please don't hesitate to contact us with your questions and thoughts about teaching and learning. And please check the SITE website for more information about our office hours.

The online mentoring experience is intended to last a semester and is, first and foremost, a collegial relationship. Through the mentor's personal guidance, the protégé can question and explore online teaching strategies and expectations. Dialogue drives this relationship, but the mentor can also review online course activities and interactions. What is needed and how to go about getting those needs are met is something that is left to the devices of the mentor and protégé.

What do you think --- would a mentor be helpful to you as you begin teaching online? Or would you like a mentor even though you have taught online? By engaging in a mentoring relationship, you can ask questions, share comments, voice concerns, dissect instructional strategies, and feel connected to someone else who has walked in your shoes.

About two or three years ago it seemed that the most requested topic for faculty programming was classroom management. All we had to do was schedule an event with the words, management, incivility, or millennial in the title and it was standing room only. As styles fade, so do topics, and this was no exception. However, much to my surprise, this topic seems to be back in "fashion", but with a twist - a rather serious twist. Now it seems, that it isn't simply about that student snoozing in class or texting under the desk, it is also about true incivility, and, in some cases, true behavior problems. Faculty are being faced with students who, due to legitimate medical conditions, are struggling with how to interact appropriately in the college classroom. This is, of course, in addition, to the traditional, occasional, rude, inappropriate, and disruptive student. It is a difficult position to find oneself in. How does one differentiate between the student who simply needs a swift, decisive "reality check", and one that is truly adrift? I wish I had a glib and easy answer. But, alas, I do not. One thing I can suggest is that it starts with the faculty member. Beginning the first day the students and faculty meet, the tone is set. The syllabus sets a tone. Language sets a tone. I am not suggesting a list of policies need to be handed out to students on the first day, however, I'm going to encourage each individual to think about how to convey a serious respect for the classroom and the learning endeavor, and how to demonstrate, thus command, respect for each and every individual. In addition, I'm going to encourage faculty to try and take themselves, and their personal biases, out of the equation.

Will you encounter problem "children" - most definitely. However, by managing "disruptions" with immediacy, firmness and discretion, the disruption to the majority of the attentive students will be minimal or completely unnoticed. For example, napping might drive you stark raving mad, but unless the napper snores, or tumbles out of their seat, it is a non-event to the rest of the class. My suggestion is to keep it that way.

If you have specific issues that you'd like to discuss, or you just need to vent, feel free to give SITE a call. We're here when you need us.

Some interesting findings are emerging. Student ratings tend to be fairly stable from class to class and from fall to spring. Race and income done have much impact on results. What is clear is that students are looking for a classroom where the teacher has control and makes learning challenging. And one city, Memphis, has become the first school system in the country to link survey results to teachers' annual reviews by having the surveys count for 5% of a teacher's evaulation. 

A variety of questions are being asked on these surveys, but the five most correlated with student learning are listed below:

1. Students in this class treat the teacher with respect.

2. My classmates behave the way my teacher wants them to.

3. Our class stays busy and doesn't waste time.

4. In this class, we learn a lot almost every day.

5. In this class, we learn to correct our mistakes.

What can those of us in higher education learn from this article? Are we, for example, asking the right questions? Are we using the information we gather from students to define quality teaching and to inform better practice?

Tell me and I may forget

Show me and I may remember

Involve me and I will understand.

Consultants at the Schreyer Institute have just returned from the annual conference of the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education (POD). One of the speakers at the event was Michael Wesch. He teaches cultural anthropology at Kansas State University where he studies social media and its effects on society. Dr. Wesch may be familiar...His class's YouTube video called A Vision of Students Today went viral several years ago.  His talk at this year's POD conference was one of the most inspiring and hopeful messages I've heard in a long while. He talked about our need to instill 'wonder' in the 'Age of Whatever.' The talk didn't begin with optimism, but it ended that way.

There were two parts of his message that I think have important implications for faculty in higher education (not to mention for teachers, parents, mentors, etc. everywhere). The first is that we must give students what Wesch called 'the gift of big questions.' It's true that students ask the small ones...Will this information be on the test? How long does the paper have to be? But our job is to get them thinking about the BIG questions, the ones that inspire a quest for knowledge, understanding, and application. The small questions don't change the world, but the big questions can.

The second big message for me was related to the first but focused more on technology. If we inspire wonder and big questions, then technology becomes an invaluable tool for communicating, information seeking, information sharing, and problem-solving. If we fail in this regard, then technology is essentially just distraction. (Interestingly, the other plenary speaker at the conference was Alex Soojung-Kim Pang who spoke about the Distraction Addiction. His book by this title is due out next year.) When wonder and big questions drive social media interaction then Facebook, for example, becomes a means of social change, not a distraction from learning.

This is not rocket science. It's not new information. But Wesch's was a poignant--and for those of us in the room, graphic--reminder of what's at stake and why it's important. It was also a hopeful message, if we can inspire in our students a sense of wonder by giving them the gift of big questions, then their thinking and their engagement with technology find purpose. 

I was having lunch with the Liberal Arts teaching group at University Park campus, and the conversation turned briefly to how students don't seem to read much these days, but when they do, they seem to prefer paper copies of things to electronic versions. (In fact, many of us in the group had printed out paper copies of an article the group was discussing that day). I said I wondered if students prefer a format they can physically annotate.

We talked about NB, a software package developed at MIT that students can use to annotate electronic text. None of us have used it, but we are wondering if anyone at Penn State has.

I took a brief turn in the "sandbox" (NB's demo) and noticed the software has ways to annotate text and share with a group, or jot notes to oneself. Check it out:

http://nb.mit.edu/welcome

Reading text and marking it up with notes and questions seems to be an important part of how we learn, but it's not something students are able to do naturally or easily. See this article from this morning's Chronicle of Higher Education:

http://chronicle.com/article/Mark-It-Up/135166/

How much more would our students read if we modeled how to interact with a text through annotation? And what if we had an effective way of doing so electronically?

"a skeptical discontent with the present, informed by a sense of the past"
"the ability to make connections among seemingly disparate phenomena"
"appreciation for the natural world, enhanced by knowledge of arts and sciences"
"the ability to imagine experiences from experiences other than one's own" and
"a sense of ethical responsibility"