Student As Customer

I approach teaching assignments as I do consulting assignments. My role is to help my clients achieve their goals. It is my responsibility to give the clients what I perceive they need to achieve those goals. What they need may differ from what they want.

When I am teaching a course, the students in the classroom are my clients. They are my customers. To serve them I must first know what it is they want from the course. I begin each course asking the students to write for me why they are taking the course, what they want to learn, and how they prefer to learn. I use this input to help me design the course. This is why I do not finalize a syllabus until I have received the students’ input. Even then I will make changes during the semester as I discover ways that may better serve the students’ needs.

Viewing the student as the customer can have a profound effect on how you teach. Such a perspective fosters a learner-centered approach to teaching. The student as customer does not mean that control is handed over to the students. As with my clients, I am responsible to provide students with what they need to achieve their educational goals. What they ask for may not be what they need. I am to help them to realize this and to deliver that which will move them toward achievement of their goals.

Higher-Level Learning

In a piece in To Improve the Academy, Dee Fink of the University of Oklahoma outlines how to formulate goals for higher-level learning. He describes six categories for teachers to address if they wish to move students to higher levels of learning. I have found the following categories and questions Fink provides useful as I have worked on my own course designs.

I. Foundational Knowledge: What key facts, terms, formulas, concepts, etc. are important for students to understand and remember?

II. Application: What kinds of thinking and skills do students need to learn?

III. Integration: Are there important connections students are to recognize and make?

IV. Human Dimension: Is there anything students are to learn about themselves and interacting with others?

V. Motivation: Are there any changes you want to see in what students care about, feel, value?

VI. Learning How To Learn: Do you want students to learn how knowledge is constructed for this subject or how to become a self-directed learner relative to this subject?

The Unknown

At the end of the medieval spiritual classic The Cloud of Unknowing, the author writes, “It is not what you are, and not what you have been, but what you wish to be that God considers with His merciful eyes.” Life is about becoming. Living organisms are either growing or dieing. Either way the organism is moving toward a new state. We can know only that which is or has been. Knowledge is about the past. We cannot know that which is not yet. Knowledge is prelude to creation. We are to help our students gain knowledge and acquire the skills to use that knowledge to create anew. We are to foster creativity and innovation in our students. That is how humanity moves forward. Each generation must move beyond what previous generations have thought and created. We are to prepare our students to move beyond us. We are to instill in them the confidence to move out of the known into the unknown.

Know-Nothing

I don’t know anything. That makes me well qualified to teach. But shouldn’t I be an expert in the subject I teach? I cringe whenever I am referred to as an expert in something. As soon as I believe I know something, I cut myself off from learning. If I know it, what more is there to learn? Knowing implies I have exhausted the subject; I have reached the limits of learning. To know is to box myself in and off. If I don't know, then I am open to learning. Openness to continuous learning is one of the key qualifications to be a teacher. One of the sources of learning for teachers is students. If I believe I know more than the students, I close myself off from what I might learn from them.

What can students teach me? Plenty! I can learn much each time I receive the student evaluations of my courses. Those evaluations can teach me how I did or did not connect with my students. I can learn the results of my experiments with various teaching methods.

If we want to instill a passion for learning in our students, then we must be role models of lifelong learning. The older I become the more passionate I am about learning. There is no end to what I can learn. I find that an exciting way to live. I want my students to experience that excitement. I don’t want them to know, I want them to learn.

Messing Up Minds

I sometimes quip that one of the things I enjoy about teaching college is that it gives me the opportunity to mess up students’ minds. Yet that is one of the responsibilities we have as college teachers. Most students come to college with their minds programmed by parents, peers, media, religious instruction, education, etc. The thinking of students is dependent upon what they have been told by others. One purpose of college instruction is to help students think independently. This does not mean that students will necessarily reject what they have previously thought. Rather, students will come to own what they think. They may decide to confirm their previously held views or revise them. The key is that they will decide for themselves. This means, as college instructors, we must expose students to alternative views and give them the tools for coming to their own conclusions.

Opposites

I was recently preparing a presentation for a business client on the subject of creating possibilities. To expand our thinking about what is possible, we need to maximize the space between what is and what might be. A way to do this is to identify the opposite of what is obvious. This can be applied to teaching. When I think of college teaching, what first comes to my mind is that teachers teach students what the students do not already know. The opposite of this might be that teachers remind students of what the students already do know. How would I conduct my courses if I took the second statement to be true? The assumption underlying the first statement is that students are empty vessels to be filled with the teacher’s wisdom. The opposite statement assumes that students bring relevant life experiences to the learning process. My role then as teacher is to help students connect their experiences with the subject matter.

An example. I teach management courses. Most of my students have no business management experience. Yet they do have experience managing other aspects of their lives. I can help them connect the principles of business management to management of their education, their careers, their relationships. I can have them reflect on how they currently apply management principles in their lives and how they might improve on their application of those principles. If students realize they already know something about the subject being taught, they may feel less intimidated about expanding that knowledge into new arenas. So after I help students recognize how they are already involved in managing, we can then explore how management principles are applied in the workplace. This approach also provides students who are currently not in management positions opportunities to practice management skills. They can practice applications in other arenas of their lives. As the saying goes, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” How can students learn if they have no opportunity to apply what they are being taught?

Here is another possibility to ponder. The obvious is that teachers teach students. The opposite is that students teach teachers. I have experienced the latter when I have brought my classes to an art museum. I never view a piece of art in the same way after I have had students share their perspectives of the piece. How can you become a student of your students?

Four Important Things

Four Important Things in Life and Work

Find your people.
Find your place.
Tell your story.
Listen.

The above is from Life And Work by James Autry--business executive, writer, poet.

Autry’s four important things relate to the purpose of college. The college experience can be viewed as a rite of passage. Students are to discern their role in society and who they are to serve in that role. They are to discover what they have to contribute. And they are to be sensitive to how the community responds to that contribution.

Introduction

My name is Mitchell Alegre. I want to use this weblog to explore the topics of teaching and learning. I already keep journals but blogging provides the opportunity to share with others. Of course, I may be simply talking to myself. Even if no one is reading these entries, however, writing them gives me a way to organize my thoughts. Perhaps my thoughts will spark someone else’s thinking. So in the event that someone else may read these entries, I will try to keep them short.

It may be helpful for you to have some background on me. I am currently a full-time Adjunct Professor of Management in the College of Business Administration at Niagara University in Lewiston, New York, just north of Niagara Falls. I also teach undergraduate courses in Communication Studies at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, and a leadership course in the college’s graduate program in Organizational Communications and Development. For the past 21 years I have operated my own consulting and training business. I focus on personal and organizational development. My area of expertise is the people issues within organizations. My passion is leadership development. I continue to consult with clients along with fulfilling my teaching responsibilities. My client work keeps me connected with the realities of the workplace.

My experience working with people at all levels in organizational hierarchies and from all types of organizations is one of the strengths I bring to my teaching. Some may consider my thoughts on learning and education naïve since I come from outside the academic system. However, I consider this to be an advantage. I bring an outsider’s perspective and curiosity.

The older I get (I am 54) the more passionate I become about learning. I look forward to the opportunity to explore the subjects of teaching and learning with whomever else may wish to join in the discussion.