11 Years of Marriage, 49 Years To Go

As implied in its title, this blog is my outlet for writing my reflections related to learning, success, and how to improve both. However, today I will take a moment to write about different but very related matter: my family. More specifically, today is our 11th anniversary, and I will reflect on the beautiful years of marriage that my beautiful wife Katie and I have enjoyed together.

We were married in the Salt Lake LDS Temple at like 7:30 in the morning exactly 11 years ago.

10 months later, we had our beautiful daughter. She has been a source of great joy in our life ever since.

Over the last 11 years, we have had many experience. We have endured health issues and personal struggles. We have worked very hard to help our daughter through her health issues and are constantly amazed at her perseverance and goodness. We have survived years of schooling, job changes, and relocation. And we have had a beautiful, happy marriage.

Here is our family in just after midnight on the first day of 2014.

Because this is a blog about success, I will now write why I think our marriage has been successful. Disclaimer: Certainly, our marriage has not been perfect. We have had our share of struggles, disagreements, heartaches, and pain. But we are still married, we are happy, and we are moving forward with hope for more great experiences. So, what do has made our marriage successful?

1. Faith and Hope. We believe in the institution of marriage and believe that God wants us to be married happily for life. We also have hope that if we do our best, we will enjoy great blessings of happiness and success.
2. Commitment. We are committed to our marriage. We are both committed to stick together forever, no matter the difficulties. 
3. Patience. We work to be patient with one another. One thing I have noticed is that it is easy to magnify the faults or errors of another, particularly a family member.  But I find this to be an immature lack of discipline. Focusing and magnifying the good in another person is the sure way to help them develop and improve themselves, and Katie and I work hard to do that. 
4. Kindness. Simple civility and kindness can go a very long way. We are far from perfect in this thing, but we strive to be thoughtful of and kind to one another.
5. Forgiveness. Nobody is perfect, and we both work to forgive one another's mistakes and errors. Katie has done a particularly good job at forgiving my own faults and stupidity.
6. Hard work. Anything worthwhile requires work.  We work to be successful ourselves. We work to support and teach our daughter. And we work to make our marriage work.

So, as the title of the blog post suggests, We are planning on at least 49 more years of happy, successful marriage. Thank you Katie for being such an outstanding wife, a great companion, and someone I can trust and rely on. We look to the future with hope and confidence that good things are coming, and that we can endure any difficulties. I close this blog post with a video playlist of totally awesome, EPIC love songs from the 80s (and some from 70s and 90s thrown in there, too). Oh, yes. 

Summary of Experience at 2014 Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy

I recently attended the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy. I drove down to Blacksburg, VA from Columbus, Ohio with several coworkers and really enjoyed the experience. It was a lovely conference, and I had fun getting to know my coworkers better. Below are links to the blog posts on my thoughts and experiences at this conference.

• Day 1 - Technology, Individual Change, and Poster Sessions
• Day 2 - Argument Analysis, Brain-based Learning, and Training Teachers in Higher Ed
• Day 3 - Effective Student Teams

Day 3 - Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy

This post is part of a series reporting on my experiences at the the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy. Click here to read more on this conference. #2014CHEP

Session - Effectiveness of Student Teams

The final session that I attended at the conference was a session on how to help student teams work effectively. It was presented and facilitated by Eric Rice and Richard Parsons.They did a good job facilitating the sessions, and one thing I really liked was that they hung posters that seemed to categorize effective teamwork into 5 general themes. I'll show these posters below and discuss how I think they can be implemented effectively into a team environment.

 

1. Formation of Groups

Teams need to be formed in the class. Groups seem to be most effective at around 4 group members. Be sure that they are composed of a variety of strengths and capacities. Keep in mind that these individuals may have had a history of working together.

2. Workload Distribution

Teams need to ensure that their work is distributed effectively so they can accomplish the tasks required. This distribution should consider the following components:

• Balance of the Quantity of work assigned
• Expectations and standards of Quality for the output desired
• Selection of Tasks related to the work
• Assignment of Ownership of each component of the work assigned
• Create mechanisms to control or penalize Social Loafing and Disengagement

3. Scheduling

Student teams must function efficiently, and having an effective schedule can help them to do this. The schedule should enable the students to complete each component within the time required. Schedules should include (a) when/how often to meet as a group, and (b) when to draft, revise, and submit work to the instructor.

4. Resolving Conflict

Sometimes conflict arises in a team environment. Students and instructors must establish methods for resolving this conflict.

5. Grading and Evaluation

When working with student teams, it is important that their work be effectively evaluated. This should include the following components:

• Peer Evaluation - have students evaluate one another so that you can understand how each individual contributed throughout the teamwork. This evaluation should occur frequently so that everyone has a feel for how they are doing and how they can improve.
• Individual Contributions - evaluation of each student should include an evaluation of what each individual contributed to the work completed. This will help you see how that individual contributed and see the quality of their work.
• Overall Grade - evaluation of the overall grade for the team is also key. This helps in the grading of the team as a whole.
• Rubrics and Standards - all evaluation should be based on rubrics and standards that are established from the beginning. This will help the students and teams see the end from the beginning and have something to work toward.

This was a great Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy, and I was very glad to have been able to attend it with my friends and coworkers at Franklin University. I cam away with ideas on how I can improve my own work. If possible, I hope to attend the conference again in the future.

Individual Sustainability and Success

I recently attended a conversation at the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy and the discussion in one session revolved around the idea of individual sustainability as a prerequisite to social sustainability. The idea is that an individual must become self-sustaining before a social sustainability can take place. This makes sense to me and seems to correlate to the idea of "private victory before public victory," often stated by Stephen Covey. The idea is that a person must become independent before he or she can become interdependent. 

In that session, the presenters Eric Pappas and Olga Pierrakos shared a definition of individual sustainability, which I thought was absolutely stunning. In my opinion, this definition could easily be a definition of individual success. At any rate, here is the definition taken from their handout:

Living a sustainable lifestyle includes creating harmony, interconnection, and relatively high levels of awareness in one's own values, thoughts, and behaviors, as well as maintaining and increasing control over one's physical, emotional, social, philosophical, and intellectual life. The general dispositions that support individual sustainability are awareness, motivation, and the ability to engage in intentional self-development. As well, individual sustainability includes possessing a well-developed and demonstrated value system that acknowledges the interconnectedness of all global biological systems and our appropriate place in the Natural World.

What a great definition!


Who Should Teach People to Become Individually Sustainable?
One of the questions asked in this session was whether higher education should busy itself in engendering individual sustainability. I asked the question: if not higher education, then who will do it? If we agree that teaching people to live harmonious, productive, self-regulating lives is a good idea, then how can we as a society teach them to do it? I personally believe that people must be taught these skills in all areas of their lives. People should learn primarily in their homes from parents, siblings, uncles, aunts and grandparents. We should learn these skills in our churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples. We should learn them in grade school, in the community, and even in the general media.

But, of course, not all of these areas can agree on what to teach, and not all areas will do the teaching. But we should do our part to enable everyone we can to be a success. Ultimately, it becomes the responsibility of the individual to create and live a life that is sustainable and successful. Still, I am hopeful that I am teaching my daughter to be a self-sustaining, conscientious individual. And I hope that I am doing all I can to live an increasingly sustainable life.

Day 2 - Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy

This post is part of a series reporting on my experiences at the the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy. Click here to read more on this conference. #2014CHEP

As I wrote in yesterday's post, I have been attending the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy in Blacksburg, Virginia. Thus far it has been a really nice experience. The conference planners and managers are doing an excellent job at keeping the conference moving in a smooth, enjoyable manner, and the sessions are meaningful and thought-provoking, for the most part. In this post I will share some of my learning experiences and reflections from Day 2 of the conference.

Session - Creative Approach to Argument Analysis

In the first session of the day, I attended a presentation on a creative approach for teaching freshman argument analysis. The instructors shared an approach for helping their students really analyze arguments in meaningful, critical ways. They defined several different approaches to analyzing arguments, which they called different "Hats."  The image below shows the general approach to be taken for each had. Students were assigned these different approaches and were asked to analyze a video, a piece of text, or some kind of media.

One thing I liked was that they used progressively difficult analysis tasks. They began by having students analyze shorter, less-serious videos and pieces of text. Specifically they shared a video (below) of a young man giving a speech to incoming freshmen and had them analyze the video.

 As I mentioned, the arguments the students analyzed became increasingly complex and mature as the semester progressed, and near the end students were analyzing TED talks and scholarly articles.

I particularly liked the progressive nature of the course. The slow increase of complexity really aids students to handle increasingly difficult concepts and tasks. I also liked that video was used - this makes the task perhaps more interesting and also helps students transfer to different settings and media. A good strategy.

Session - Brain-based Learning 

The next session I attended was one on brain-based learning. The presenters' goal was to share "key instructional principles (that)... incorporate brain-based learning" which apparently is based on neuroscience. They started the session by briefly describing how the brain on a molecular level functions. In basic (as I understand it) when something is learned, the brain creates new "links" between neurons. These links occur on a molecular level and involve some kind of a chemical reaction in which dendrites (the little arms of the neuron) share chemicals back and forth. This is a super-basic definition that is probably wrong, so if you are a biologist or a neurologist, please be kind :). Anyway, the idea is that this knowledge of how the brain functions really should help us know how we can teach effectively.

Sharing how the brain functions on a basic level.

Based on this information, the presenters (who did not claim to be neuro-scientists but educations who have learned about these principles and attempted to use them in the class) share the following three major strategies based on brain science.

• Activate Prior Knowledge - have students describe or present heir prior learning related to the topic to be learned for that day.
• Show Patterns/Organize Knowledge - we should provide students with patterns or organization of the knowledge and should even have them categorize and organize themselves such as through a mind map. One of the instructors mentioned that she did this by sharing the organization and sequence of activities to take place within a session or during the week. I tend to think of this as more of a classroom management strategy than activation - the activation should show the structure of the content, not the sequence ofa ctivities in a course. Still, it could accomplish both at the same time...
• Support Deep Learning and Active Processing - This includes things like helping students see the relevance of what they are learning, helping them become emotionally connected to what they are learning, and helping them contextualize the knowledge.

What I thought was interesting was that all of these activities have been recommended for quite some time, long before the idea of brain-based learning came around. They have a cognitivist slant to them, from what I could see. I a not totally convinced that a knowledge of how these dendrites communicate with each other really changes how we teach - I tend to think that making that leap is a bit much. But I do believe in these principles and think that a general knowledge of how the brain works can have an influence on how we teach. One good side-effect of this presentation is that I plan to check out some books on the topic to see if I can glean any more knowledge on the topic.

Session - Preparing Graduate Students to Teach in the College Classroom

Preparing instructions effectively is a big issue in higher education. In this presentation, employees of the Office of Teaching Effectiveness at University of Georgia shared how they prepare their graduate assistants to teach their courses. They actually require GA's to take a semester-long course on pedagogy before they can teach, which I thought was a good idea. This is similar to how we do our training of adjunct faculty at Franklin, though our course is only 1 credit. One interesting fact is that the University of Georgia has hundreds of teaching GAs (650, I believe) at any given time. This is as many as Franklin's entire adjunct faculty. We are definitely a smaller university, but I believe that we have excellent instructors. Anyway, below is an image of the overall strategy they use at their University, the pedagogy course being one of the major root components. The leaves are additional work that a faculty member can take as desired.

Day 1 - Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy

This post is part of a series reporting on my experiences at the the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy. Click here to read more on this conference. #2014CHEP

I have been attending the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy at Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. Today was the first day of the conference, and I will report on some of the interesting things I have learned or thought about today. As I mentioned, the conference has been on the campus at Virginia Tech. Below is a picture of the conference center/hotel. It is a very nice facility and makes for a good meeting location.

The conference center on Virginia Tech Campus in Blacksburg, Va.

Keynote Speaker

Jose Antonio Bowen speaking as keynote speaker.

Our Keynote Speaker who was the opening speaker was Jose Antonio Bowen. He is a music professor and Dean of the Meadows School of Arts. His talk was entitled "Teaching Naked" in the classroom. By this he was implying that we should use technology to deliver content and then use classroom time to engage students. Strangely many of his ideas for engaging students actually involved using technology, so I got the impression that the title of his presentation (which is also the title of a book he recently wrote) was more an attention getter than an actual strategy for teaching in class.

Anyway, one of the main points of his talk is that educators' main strength is not providing content (which seems to be readily available on the internet). Rather, it is helping students gain thinking abilities - the capacity to solve problems, do complex tasks, think critically, etc. This makes sense to me - we live in a world where we have limitless information available, so we should mainly help people know how to take that information and make use of it.

He had an engaging style and share examples of how he has engaged his students using technology. He uses audio files to share examples of musical concepts, has games that students play to try and "level up" their understanding as they progress through a set of quizzes. His content is inherently interesting, and I enjoyed listening to his musical examples.

All Change Starts With Individual Change

One of the sessions that I attended had the above title. It was a session facilitated by Eric Pappas and Olga Pierrakos. They facilitated a discussion around the concept of individual sustainability as a key aspect of a sustainable environment, culture, and economy. We discussed some of the influences on our ability to live in a sustainable, healthy way. I thought the discussion was interesting; however, I was blown away by the definition they provided for what individual sustainability is. I share their definition and discuss it briefly here. It was a good discussion.

Engaging Students in Online Courses

One of the sessions I attended was focused on engaging students in online courses. The  facilitators were passionate and excited about the topic, which was nice. It was discussion-oriented, so I could get a sense from others' comments about how much online education was happening in their schools and universities. I came away from the session with the realization that Franklin University (where I currently teach and work) has done a great job at doing new things in education and embracing new technologies and approaches. I would say that all of the concerns and suggestions by the other participants were something that I and my colleagues at Franklin have already considered and taken advantage of. I ended up leaving the session a early and hope that it was useful for others.

Poster Sessions

One of the sessions for today was a poster session. Barbara Carder put together a great poster describing the instructional design approach she and I and several others used to redesign one of the courses in the IDPT Masters degree program at Franklin. It was fun to share our experiences and we enjoyed talking with others and hearing about what they do.

Barbara Carder and me (Joel Gardner) with out poster at the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy.

 Dr. David Ni also attended the conference and gave a poster presentation entitled Designing Authentic Learning for Higher Education.

Barbara Carder, Joel Gardner and David Ni at the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy.

After today's sessions Amy Vinchesi, David Ni and I went for a short walk on Virginia Tech's campus. It is absolutely stunning - nearly all of the buildings are made of stone and have a very classy look to them. I was impressed with the sheer size and beauty of the campus and really enjoyed being on the campus with the students and faculty.

Me (Joel Gardner) on the Virginia Tech Campus in Blacksburg, Va.

It was a good first day and I was able to reflect and think on my own practice in teaching, so it has been really nice so far. I will continue to write about the experiences here at the conference.