A Learner’s Way

For the past two weeks I’ve been visiting employers to check on how students are progressing at their Field Placement internships.

As an educator speaking to potential employers I want to know:

What I’ve learned in recent visits (and many in the past few years) is that most supervisors spend little time answering these questions. We spend the bulk of our meeting discussing observations like these:

“We’re really impressed at how hard she works; she’s willing to pitch in on just about any project.”

or

“We love that he takes initiative. Once he’s finished a project, he’s asking what else he can do to help out.”

or

“I‘m impressed that she’s not afraid to speak up during our Monday morning brainstorm. She fits in; everyone likes her.”

Internship supervisors judge attitude, not aptitude. As educators, we spend most of our time evaluating and grading assignments that measure aptitude. Awarding grades for attitude is often discouraged. Too subjective. And, pragmatically, they’re too hard to defend if you face a grade appeal.

For example, let’s say you want to include this learning objective in your course outline: Students will demonstrate the ability to cooperate in team settings during a variety of in-class problem-solving situations involving their peers, and you decide to award 10 percent of the student’s grade for demonstrating this quality.

For a learning outcome that will stand up to scrutiny, you must define what you mean by “cooperate.” Then you must ensure students understand the “defined standard,” or benchmark, they’ll try to achieve. Then, you’d have to observe and record all instances of cooperation, to this defined standard. (You might be doing all of this for a class of 40 or more.)

To calculate the grade, you’ll devise a mathematical formula to arrive at a letter grade. You’ll probably use a simple formula, like, if a student exhibited cooperation, to a defined standard, in eight out of 10 in-class problem-solving situations with peers, he or she would earn eight out of 10, or an A grade.

However, a student might challenge your assessment. He might suggest various levels of cooperation exist and his in-class instances of cooperation should be rated higher than his neighbour’s. Or that he might tell you he would have co-operated more often if only the room wasn’t so noisy, or the professor had spoken more clearly, or the course outline had provided better examples. If only, if only, if only…..

Educators operate within a ridiculous system of evaluation. So unrealistic. That’s not how the world works. My dream course evaluation would more accurately reflect the work of work our students interns navigate. It would award one third of a student’s grade for technical competency and two-thirds would evaluate a student’s:
1. ability to consistently meet stated deadlines
2. ability to show up most of the time and to genuinely contribute
3. efforts to get along with classmates, faculty and front office support staff
4. ability to “roll with the punches” and quit blaming others for lack of success
5. genunine desire to learn
6. amount of curiosity and creativity
7. emotional maturity, especially when dealing with criticism from classmates and faculty.

Educators, students and employers: what do you want measured? And, how can these measures be taken within traditional academic courses?

I love hearing from grads, especially successful grads earning their living in PR. In recent weeks, I’ve heard from several, either via Facebook, in person or through regular e-mail.

An e-mail note from a grad of about 10 years ago (who now works in PR in the U.S.) got me thinking: have times really changed?

She writes: “This morning, I spoke with the woman who manages our internship program. There are so many graduates who have zero experience. As an agency, we run pretty lean and don’t have a lot of time to teach (yes, teach!) how to write a news release. I can’t get over how much Centennial’s program taught me. It’s amazing to see the difference in academic quality.

Of the interns we have had, there has been so much push back from them if you can believe it. There’s this sense of what we’re calling “corner office entitlement” where they think putting together a media list is beneath them and that they should be engaged in higher-level strategy and account direction.

She and I were just reminiscing about the “old days” when it was you, a bound media directory and the phone book and had to actively seek out your contacts as opposed to logging on to Bacon’s (Bowden’s) and running a quick search.

Times have changed (and in what a short time!)”

From my perspective, times haven’t changed that much.

Students with a “what can you do for me?” attitude instead of: “how can I help?” were the same in 1988 as they are in 2008. Students who begin internships with the idea it’s all about shining a light on them, rather than them helping to shine a light on their boss, client or organization are bound to get a rude awakening from supervisors like my grad.

So, employers out there: have times changed that much? Are you experiencing new hires who exhibit “corner office entitlement?”

A conversation overheard between two female students this morning: “Like…..how come students who never come to class get good grades and others who are always here get lousy grades?”

“Yeah, like, I figure, why should I come to class to learn about the history of the telegraph? What good is that going to do for me?” How’s that going to help me get a job?”

“Yeah, like, I have a friend who doesn’t bother going to his MBA classes. He figures, why am I paying all this money to have somebody at the front read stuff from the textbook? I can do that myself.”

The conversation ended with one of the young women remarking: “Like, I pay a lot of money to come here. Why should I pay for stuff that I can do on my own, like reading?”

All good questions. Why bother attending class?

For some students, the most difficult adjustment is our expectation that they attend classes regularly. They’re more familiar with the university model: attend a few classes, make sure you show up for exams, do your required presentations, hand in your essays.

We demand that they attend class and participate in lots of in-class group work, exercises, simulations, role plays, problem-solving and graded assignments. Many of these activities aren’t pre-announced. (Just like a regular day at the office, you don’t always know what’s going to unfold.)

I sympathize with students forced to sit through a 40-minute class where the entire time all they’re expected to do is listen and take notes. This is not teaching and learning.

I also understand how students perceive a class has no “value added,” when it consists of just going over the readings or endless, off-track, circular debates with no conclusion. This is not teaching and learning.

Learning is about making meaning. By extension this means designing meaningful classes that get students involved.

How do do it?

Ask their opinions. Find out how much they already know about the subject. Learn about their previous experience in the work world that relates to the subject. Provide concrete, current examples. Get them to dig into the material by analyzing samples. Expect them to add to content. Challenge them to think critically about the concepts being explored during the class. Set up classroom conditions that raise their curiosity about a subject, concept or point of view in an entirely different way.

Like the comedian who wants to leave ‘em laughing, make it your goal to have them leave the classroom thinking.

If you do that, the next conversation you might overhear is: “Like….boy, am I sorry I missed that class! I heard I missed a lot.”