{"id":930,"date":"2010-06-10t21:18:10","date_gmt":"2010-06-11t03:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/"},"modified":"2021-02-26t11:25:34","modified_gmt":"2021-02-26t16:25:34","slug":"firstyears","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/guides-sub-pages\/firstyears\/","title":{"rendered":"teaching first-year students"},"content":{"rendered":"
print version<\/a><\/p>\n on january 26, 2010, the cft held a conversation on teaching titled “teaching first-year students: the myth of first-year enlightenment.” about twenty faculty, staff, and students participated in the discussion. this was the description of the workshop:<\/p>\n the popular vision of the first year experience is one of personal, ethical, and intellectual awakening. however, in his book,\u00a0the first year out: understanding american teens after high school<\/em><\/a>, tim clydesdale writes, \u201cmost of the mainstream american teens i spoke with neither liberated themselves intellectually nor broadened themselves socially during their first year out. what teens actually focus on during the first year out is this: daily life management.\u201d should vanderbilt faculty and staff try to engage first-year students in critical thinking about their own ethics, values, and culture?\u00a0 or should we give that up as a lost cause and focus on more practical matters?\u00a0 these and other, related questions will be discussed in panelist remarks and roundtable discussion.<\/p>\n panelists at the session were\u00a0mark dalhouse, director of the office of active citizenship & service, faculty head of east house, and lecturer in history;\u00a0joseph wehby<\/a>, associate professor of special education; and\u00a0roark luskin, vucept board special events chair and class of 2012.<\/p>\n the general consensus during the discussion was that vanderbilt first-years do focus their attention on daily life management–at first. several participants indicated that they felt that vanderbilt first-years move past this, however, and engage in the kind of self-questioning that clydesdale describes as rare among first-year college students. here are a few of cft assistant director derek bruff’s takeaways from the conversation:<\/p>\n on april 1, 2010, the cft held a conversation on teaching titled “teaching first-year students: cognitive challenges of the first year.” about twenty-five faculty, staff, and graduate students participated in the discussion. this was the description of the workshop:<\/p>\n \u201cwill this be on the test?\u201d is, perhaps, a common question from first-year students, but why is it so common?\u00a0 students who assume their job is to memorize course material and regurgitate it on exams are going to want to know what to memorize, of course.\u00a0 what leads students to have this belief about learning?\u00a0 and what do we do to contribute to this belief?\u00a0 if we want to help our first-year students move beyond memorization to deeper learning, how should we approach teaching them?\u00a0 what kind of \u201cdeep learning\u201d are first-year students capable of achieving?\u00a0 and how does vanderbilt admissions identify prospective students who possess the kind of intellectual curiosity faculty appreciate?\u00a0 these and other, related questions will be discussed in panelist remarks and roundtable discussion.<\/p>\n panelists at the session were\u00a0doug christiansen, vice provost for enrollment, dean of admissions, and assistant professor of public policy and higher education;\u00a0susan kevra<\/a>, senior lecturer in french and american studies; and adam list, senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies in chemistry.<\/p>\n below are answers suggested by workshop panelists and participants in response to the questions used to frame the discussion, as summarized by cft assistant director derek bruff.<\/p>\n panelist adam list pointed to the difference between\u00a0algorithmic <\/em>problem solving and\u00a0applied <\/em>problem solving<\/strong>.\u00a0 algorithmic problem solving involves accurately following known procedures to solve problems of certain types.\u00a0 students can often succeed at this kind of problem solving by following \u201crecipes\u201d they have memorized.\u00a0 applied problem solving is that which requires more than just following procedures.\u00a0 it involves selecting appropriate procedures and adapting those procedures to work in the context of particular problems.\u00a0 we might call this\u00a0creative<\/em> or\u00a0adaptive<\/em> problem solving.<\/p>\n one participant claimed that high schools focus too much on teaching algorithmic problem solving and not applied problem solving.\u00a0 this poses a challenge for first-year students making the transition from high school to college.\u00a0 some will say things like\u00a0\u201cthat test question wasn\u2019t on the homework!\u201d<\/strong> as a complaint because they don\u2019t see the difference between these two types of problem solving.<\/p>\n panelist doug christiansen noted that some students approach their admissions essays algorithmically, trying to follow some kind of a pattern likely to get them into vanderbilt.\u00a0 doug noted that\u00a0the admissions team looks to \u201ctriangulate\u201d evidence of a student\u2019s potential<\/strong>, comparing admissions essays with letters of recommendation and the roles the student played in high school organizations.<\/p>\n other phrases used in reference to deep learning included conceptual learning, writing skills, intellectual curiosity, and critical thinking.\u00a0 in the sciences, critical thinking sometimes means being able to ask and answer the question \u201cdoes this answer make sense?\u201d at the end of a problem.\u00a0 in other disciplines, critical thinking implies the ability to construct an argument for a position.<\/p>\n a theme in responses to this question was the complicated subject of student motivation.\u00a0 connecting students\u2019 personal interests to course material was one way mentioned to help motivate students to engage in deep learning.\u00a0 panelist susan kevra described an assignment in which students were asked to design a fund-raising campaign for a good cause of their choice.\u00a0 the assignment was connected to the study of a french writer who conducted similar campaigns.\u00a0\u00a0by surfacing student interests through this assignment before studying the writer, she helped motivate her students to see more value in studying the writer.<\/strong> she noted that this strategy worked particularly well for some students who took her course because they \u201chad to\u201d not because they wanted to.<\/p>\n other aspects of student motivation raised during the discussion included the role of challenge (assignments that are not too hard nor too easy are often more motivating), choice (giving students some level of choice in topics, assignment types, grading schemes, and so on, is often more motivating), and, of course, the role of grades.<\/p>\n the following questions were raised in various ways during the discussion.\u00a0 they highlight what appear to be key challenges in helping students make the cognitive adjustment from learning in high school to learning in college.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a> print version principles and strategies the myth of first-year enlightenment? cognitive challenges of the first year other resources principles and strategies provide feedback, early & often \u2013 first-year students making the transition from excelling in high school to meeting expectations in a college class can benefit from feedback, early and often in the semester. a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":452,"featured_media":0,"parent":18232,"menu_order":87,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"spay_email":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/930"}],"collection":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/452"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=930"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37817,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/930\/revisions\/37817"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
<\/a>principles and strategies<\/h2>\n
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<\/a>the myth of first-year enlightenment?<\/h2>\n
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<\/a>cognitive challenges of the first year<\/h2>\n
if memorization is shallow learning, then what does deep learning look like in various teaching contexts?<\/h3>\n
what are some ways to better communicate our expectations for learning to our students?<\/h3>\n
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what role does student motivation play in encouraging deep learning?<\/h3>\n
unanswered questions<\/h3>\n
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<\/a>other resources<\/h2>\n
podcasts<\/h3>\n
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books<\/h3>\n
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\nthis teaching guide is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"