Winter 2005
Creating a Culture of Learning
Harvard University President Emeritus Derek Bok has kept close tabs
on the state of higher education in America throughout his career
and he is not pleased with what he sees. At the inaugural meeting
of the Forum on Excellence in Higher Education, held in Cambridge
this fall, keynote speaker Bok told participants that colleges and
universities put more weight into what they teach than on how they
teach. As a consequence, he said, these institutions often miss
the opportunity to help students with their critical thinking, quantitative
reasoning, and moral reasoning. (His recently published book, Our
Underachieving Colleges, is a sobering assessment of how this
fails students and, as a consequence, society at large.)
The Forum on Excellence is designed to address these shortcomings.
Spearheaded by Harvard professor Richard Light, and with sponsorship
from the Spencer Foundation, the five-year initiative brings together
fourteen top-tier institutions, including Duke, to explore innovations
in teaching and learning. The ultimate goal is to prompt colleges
and universities to assess on a continuous basis what works and
what doesn’t work in producing young adults equipped to succeed
in a rapidly changing and competitive world.
One of the Duke participants, Hart Leadership Program director Alma
Blount, says the Forum will provide a systematic way of discovering
optimal pedagogies, while allowing flexibility to change course
when things don’t work as well. “It was inspiring to
hear that many of the things we are already doing in the Hart Leadership
Program – critical reflection, experiential learning, an emphasis
on writing – are now being recognized as enhancing a student’s
learning capacity. Instinctively we knew this to be true, but there
is greater recognition throughout higher education that it really
works. The Forum on Excellence in Higher Education will help us
document why these things work, as well as enabling us to collaborate
with and learn from colleagues on other campuses.”
In addition to Blount, a lecturer in Public Policy Studies, the
other Duke participants are Dean of Trinity College and Vice Provost
for Undergraduate Education Robert Thompson, assistant professor
of sociology and director of undergraduate studies Suzanne Shanahan,
and assistant professor of the practice in economics and director
of EcoTeach, Michelle Connolly. As the first team to present its
work at the initial November meeting, the Duke group focused on
its top two initiatives: establishing an undergraduate culture of
research, and fostering a sense of civic engagement among students.
Dean Thompson says he hopes that implementing these goals through
participation in the Forum will help create what he calls a “culture
of evidence” regarding learning outcomes. “By this,”
he explains, “I mean the assessment of the effectiveness or
‘value added’ of various curricular and pedagogical
initiatives in terms of learning outcome objectives. The two innovations
I wanted the Duke team to address through the Forum are our efforts
(1) to establish a culture of undergraduate research and (2) to
foster a sense of civic engagement. These initiatives relate to
the recent Duke Endowment grant to enhance undergraduate education
and the corresponding RFP (request for proposals) that I sent to
departments. Public Policy, Economics, and Sociology were very responsive
and each member of the team was chosen because of her leadership
with regard to undergraduate education in their respective departments.
Thompson says he is particularly pleased that these key departments
are making changes in the major to enable and prepare more students
to complete honors theses and engage in scholarship with a civic
mission.
Thompson and Blount have a track record of collaboration around
through Duke’s Scholarship with a Civic Mission (SCM), a project
co-sponsored by the Hart Leadership Program and the Kenan Institute
for Ethics. SCM combines academic coursework with Research Service
Learning (RSL) and critical reflection, which helps them discern
the ethical issues and leadership dilemmas inherent in their work.
(Economics professor Connolly received a Scholarship with a Civic
Mission grant to serve as a faculty mentor for an RSL project senior
Jill Isenstadt conducted to study water privatization issues in
Argentina.)
Blount says she welcomes the opportunity to build additional assessment
into what she’s already doing in the Hart Leadership Program
and Scholarship with a Civic Mission, particularly as she works
with PPS director of undergraduate studies Jay Hamilton to create
an RSL pathway in public policy studies next year. “One of
the other speakers at the conference, Harvard Business School professor
David Garvin, talked about the importance of productive failure
– how we can study and learn from our mistakes,” she
says. “Assessment should not be seen as an added burden that
faculty have to tack on to what they’re doing; instead, it
can become an ingrained and natural process of paying attention
to which teaching methods work and which don’t, and adjusting
accordingly.”
In the economics department, for example, Connolly and her colleagues
plan to assess the success of course sequencing and new research
workshops in developing both research and leadership skills. To
do so, they will compare success across course types and across
sub-areas at developing independent thinking, civic engagement,
and leadership ability.
As Connolly notes, “The department feels very strongly that
in order for students to truly be able to do research and attempt
to answer questions on issues of interest to them, they first need
to have the right tools and a minimum depth of knowledge within
a given area of study. We therefore decided that all economics students
should take Econometrics where they learn how to analyze data, and
then take at least two field courses in the area in which they wished
to do research. With the tools learned in Econometrics and a greater
depth of knowledge within their area of research, students will
then be well prepared to enter faculty-led research workshops. Through
these research workshops, students will learn from faculty, graduate
students, and their peers about the process of defining the right
question to ask about a given issue or topic and then about the
process of attempting to answer that question. The skills learned
in such an environment should greatly increase critical reasoning,
independent thinking, and leadership skills among the students in
the research workshops.”
In the sociology department, Shanahan and her colleagues hope to
achieve the same goal by developing a repertoire of research opportunities
for all majors. Over the past three years the sociology department
has launched and institutionalized a new honors program that now
provides a faculty mentored original research experience for 25%
of sociology majors. The next step is to both generalize this intensive
research experience and to find ways to tailor the sociology major
to best prepare students for independent research. Shanahan notes,
“What we quickly realized with the honors program was that
students were developing much more than great analytical skills.
Through the act of defining a sociological question and carrying
out research to answer that question, students were actually developing
a greater sense of personal and social responsibility. And this
was really exciting. Our hope is that with participation in the
Forum on Excellence we might develop tools to evaluate not only
how mentored research helps develop analytical thinking but how
it develops ‘character’—for want of a better term—and
makes Duke students more thoughtful human beings. Wouldn’t
it be great if an intensive research experience actually made you
a better friend, a better employee or employer, a better parent
and a better citizen? That’s our goal.”
And in public policy, Blount and her colleagues will address the
question of how critical reflection, which helps students develop
a capacity for complexity and ambiguity, can be used effectively
in the PPS pathway. The Duke team will meet regularly to compare
notes on their progress and lessons learned.
Other institutions participating in the Forum on Excellence in Higher
Education include Wellesley, Harvard, M.I.T., Middlebury, Georgetown,
Amherst, Haverford, Davidson, Bowdoin, Williams, Olin College of
Engineering, Macalester and the University of California-Merced.
Convener Richard Light is the Walter H. Gale Professor of Education.
With a Ph.D. in statistics, his work explores challenging problems
in American higher education. He has published seven books, including
Summing Up (with Judith Singer and John Willett) and
By Design (with David Pillemer). His most recent book, Making
the Most of College, won the Stone Award for the best book
on education and society.
-- Bridget Booher
|
