Don

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Dont Believe Everything You Think Thoughts
and Discussion on Practical Pedagogy
What do your students know, and how do they know
it? Do you really change their views and open
their eyes? How do you know how effective you are
in the classroom? Can critical thinking be
assessed on a Scantron? The educational
landscape is littered with taxonomies, schemes,
paradigms and the detritus of various and sundry
Ph.D. and Ed.D dissertation projects. Can some
synthesis of all of this be achieved that truly
helps students learn how to think? Are we
committed to that goal, or are we content (or
forced) to perpetuate the illusion of success
that standardized testing, retention
benchmarks, grade distribution comparisons, and
Rate Your Professors feedback seems to foster?
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Dont Believe Everything You Think

• A warning to all of us
• in education.
• An instruction to our students.
• A reminder of the irrational nature of the human
  mind.

Who is this curious fellow?
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An educated person is one who has learned that
information almost always turns out to be at best
incomplete and very often false, misleading,
fictitious, mendacious - just dead wrong.
Russell Baker
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If your instructional methods and practices are
still the same as they were five years ago, you
are probably not as effective as you could be.
What do you think?
A. agree B. disagree
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What do your students know,and how do they know
it?

• Are you really teaching if no one is learning?
• How do you know what (or if) they have learned?
• What do you truly expect of your students?
• What does the Administration really want?

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Are you really teaching. if no one is
learning?
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Are you really teaching. if no one is
learning?
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The Chicken That Could Play The Piano (or could
she?)
Are you really teaching if no one is learning?
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Too often we give students answers to remember
rather than problems to solve.  Roger Lewin
And we give them the answers too quickly!
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Ok, I hope everyone is getting this
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How do you know what (or if) they have learned?
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How do you know what (or if) they have learned?
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The lecture is dead. Long live the lecture!
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Another brick in the wall. Roger Waters wrote
this about his views on formal education. He
hated his grammar school teachers and felt they
were more interested in keeping the kids quiet
than teaching them.
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Is there a practical solution?
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A question to ponder Active learning
strategies generally

1. Require more effort than straight lecture
2. Require surrender of control to the students
3. Do not allow as much material to be presented
4. All of the above and more

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Perhaps less information covered at a deeper
level, with true understanding, is more.
Bonus question Who is this guy?

• J. Edgar Hoover
• Mies Van Der Rohe
• Benjamin Bloom
• My uncle, Steve Wysong

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An education isn't how much you have committed to
memory, or even how much you know. It's being
able to differentiate between what you know and
what you don't.  Anatole France
Then I'll get on my knees and prayWe don't get
fooled againDon't get fooled againNo, no! Pete
Townshend
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The intelligent man finds almost everything
ridiculous, the sensible man almost nothing.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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• Research Analysis
• A service of the offices of Strategic Planning,
  Institutional Research, Management Information
  Systems
• Hillsborough Community College, October 2007-3
• VALIDATING THE ACCURACY OF THE STUDENT SUCCESS
  RATE
• The purpose of this study is to verify the
  accuracy of the student success rate reported by
  the Florida Department of Education. The success
  rate is calculated from performance of a First
  Time In College (FTIC) cohort four years
  following entry for associate degree-seeking
  students (e.g. 2006 for the 2002 cohort) and two
  years later for certificate-seeking students
  (e.g. 2004 for the 2002 cohort). The rate is one
  of several so-called accountabity measures
  reported for all Florida community colleges. The
  most recent rate reported by the state reflects
  performance of the fall 2002 FTIC pool and it
  will be the primary focus of this study.
• The FTIC cohort is identified every fall term.
  Determination of an FTIC starts with
  self-identification by the student on the
  application form. The rationale for FTIC cohort
  tracking is that it isolates the value-added by
  this college toward the attainment of outcomes.
• The success rate is the percentage of students
  from a given cohort (i.e. 2002) that, for the
  year examined (2004 or 2006), have
• Graduated or
• Have been retained in good academic standing (GPA
  /gt 2.0) with 18 college credit hours for
  associate degree seekers or 9 credit hours for
  those seeking a certificate or
• Have left the college in good academic standing
  with 18 college credit hours for associate degree
  seekers or 9 credit hours for those seeking a
  certificate.
• Two research questions are posed
• Is the fall 2002 cohort, submitted to the state,
  a true record of those enrolling as FTIC?
• Is the success rate true?
• Method
• To identify a true FTIC, the following
  procedures were used
• Applicable credit and clock hour course activity
  from Fall 2006 back to Spring 1989 was assembled
  resulting in 2,451,736 records. Spring 1989 is
  the first term of activity recorded in the data
  warehouse of the Department of Institutional
  Research (IR).

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Don't you think that the purpose of language is
for communication? Dr. Richard Feynman Nobel
Laureate
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My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of
the young and inflame their intellects. Robert
Maynard Hutchins  
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Thank You for Your Kind AttentionJim Wysong