Elli Goudzwaard

There is growing recognition on even the most traditional college campuses that change is afoot, and not in the run-of-the-mill, change-is-the-only-constant way we are weary of discussing. Rather, the sense is that higher education is at something of a crossroads, with dramatic reinvention the more appealing outcome and complete annihilation or worse, irrelevance, the lesser. In other words, NBD… It’s the kind of identity crisis that I imagine has taken place in higher education before (or has it?), but perhaps never with such visibility or collective foresight that a critical turning point in history is about to occur. Or rather, it’s already occurring. As I’ve written elsewhere, there is mounting evidence that what higher…

The educational technology conferences I’ve attended–InstructureCon, Online Learning Consortium ET4Online and Educause Learning Initiative, among others, seem to suffer a bit of mild hypocrisy in the form of “Do what I say, not what I do.” While we (educators, faculty developers, learning designers) preach the gospel of active, inquiry-driven, holistic learning, we rarely create these kinds of learning experiences for attendees at our sessions and conferences. The typical ed-tech conference begins with a “Welcome Session,” which amounts quite often to a litany of thank-yous, logistical announcements and instructions from the stage in an enormous ballroom filled with rows and rows of chairs. The crowd is soon ushered out to attend three days worth of 45-minute session blocks, stacked one upon…

For as critical to our happiness as workplace culture can be, I think it’s a concept that’s difficult to define. When the culture isn’t right, we know it, but it can be challenging to know what exactly isn’t working or what would be better instead. These two paragraphs from the recent HBR article, “We Learn More When We Learn Together” by Jane E. Dutton and Emily Heaphy, help to put some structure around the idea for me, and ring true as I consider the times in my career when I’ve been happy at work, and times when I’ve felt less than fulfilled. What are high-quality connections? They’re the connections with other people in which we feel positive regard, mutuality, and vitality. Positive…

A few things that have caught my attention around the web over the last week. Some old, some new. All worth giving a look. The Open Syllabus Project A recent NYTimes piece on the democratization of syllabus information via the Open Syllabus Project caught my eye. The project collects, catalogues and codes all the syllabi it can get its hands on, and uses the information to inform teaching, publication and intellectual history. I’m interested in the ways in which it might both standardize and diversify the content we’re teaching across disciplines, and draw more indelible marks between subjects for a more holistic educational experience. How might this data help to break down silos…

Maryellen Weimer’s recent post in Faculty Focus challenges the long held belief that pedagogy is unique to each discipline–as she summarizes, “Unless you know the content, you can’t know how to teach it.” She outlines the many downsides to approaching the scholarship of teaching and learning in this way: reinventing the wheel, lack of interdisciplinary conversation and collaboration, limited evidence of the efficacy of different methods across disciplines. That our attitudes about teaching are as siloed as our disciplines is not altogether surprising, and points to what I see as a larger problem that persists in the academy. Though part-time, non-tenure track faculty are now the norm rather than the exception, teaching in…

Not surprisingly, my recent blog post is in good company with a lot of other commentary on the subjects of classroom lecture and active learning after Molly Worthen’s op ed last week. A few of note: Some good discussion is taking place here and here on the listserv of the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education (POD). The crux of the conversation, which I think hits the nail on the head, is that to pit classroom lecture against active learning is a false dichotomy and creates a conflict that need not exist. Most of the educators commenting on that thread describe their methods as including both in peaceful co-existence. But, you know. Peaceful co-existence…

In her NYTimes Op Ed this week, “Lecture Me. Really,” Molly Worthen added new fodder to a conversation that has been swirling among the higher ed crowd recently. In her piece, Worthen laments the decline of the traditional classroom lecture in favor of the “active learning craze.” She describes noticing, perhaps rightly so, a more ominous note in the calls of late to replace the “sage on a stage” with more engaged approaches to teaching and learning. The undertone Worthen notes echoes the heightened conversations happening on college campuses everywhere–conversations about tradition and innovation, work readiness and student-centeredness, and the identity crisis of higher education in a time when simply going to college is no longer…

Over the last couple of months, the question of whether to get a PhD has reemerged for me. Do I need one, or want one? If so, what kind? And more importantly, why? Colleagues on a similar career path observe that a PhD seems to be a pre-requisite for taking on a leadership role of any kind in higher ed. And, as @mgoudz mused after attending Online Learning Consortium’s #ET4Online earlier this month, “All the cool kids have one.” At the same time, doctored friends have described the PhD process as a series of hoops to jump through to get at something else–more respect, higher pay, better positions. Still others have expressed dismay when these promised…

Day 3: Notes, Ideas, Topics & Tools to Explore from the Online Learning Consortium’s 8th Annual Emerging Technologies for Online Learning International Symposium Go to Day 1 Go to Day 2 Thought Vectors in Concept Space: Plenary with Gardner Campbell, Virginia Commonwealth University Campbell is the Vice Provost for Innovative Learning and Student Success at VCU and is embedded in the college’s ALT-Lab, whose mission is worth a gander: “ALT Lab models and inspires connected learning for a networked world through faculty development, student engagement, communities of practice, and technology enhanced active learning. We cultivate distinctive experiences of deeper learning fostered by high engagement for student success.” I’m into it. Topics to Explore: Technologies…

“Whole people see and create wholeness wherever they go; split people see and create splits in everything and everybody. We are meant to see in wholes and no longer just in parts. Yet we get to the whole by falling down into the messy parts—so many times, in fact, that we long and thirst for the wholeness and fullness of all things, including ourselves.” ~Richard Rohr