Big Picture Take Aways for Lifelong Learning

1.  A fundamental need to express your formative thinking

2.  Human decency/Kindness to others

3.  Making the circle larger.  This is sometimes called "Chin Up" Leadership.

Some background info for our review of the course

Credit Hours and Out of Class Time - In the old model that was in place, credits are given by "seat time" so our course is a 3-credit course because we are scheduled for 3 hours a week  (really for 160 minutes instead of 180 minutes because of the break between classes).  In that old model there was an implicit relation between out-of-class time and in-class time.  On average there should be 2 hours put in outside of class for every hour in the live class setting.  You can benchmark yourself by whether you were under, over, or approximately at that implicit standard.

National Survey of Student Engagement - This piece from twelve years ago was quite influential in defining "the problem" for much of undergraduate education in the U.S.  Note that this is not specific to the U of I.

What We're Learning About Student Engagement From NSSE: Benchmarks for Effective Educational Practices - Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning - Volume 35, Issue 2 via kwout

Note that the U of I participated in the NSSE and some reforms on campus, particularly a push in undergraduate research, were a consequence of that participation.  But we never shared the results of the surveys done on campus in a public venue.  I saw some of the early results (from about 10 years ago).  They showed the campus ranked pretty high on rigor and having a demanding curriculum.  (Though I wonder if Engineering students were over surveyed in that.)  But we ranked pretty low in student-instructor interaction.  I'm afraid that one reason the results were not made public is that they weren't "brag points" across the board.  We had some strengths but we also had some deficiencies.  I believe it is quite difficult on campus to discuss the deficiencies.

NSSE and the Disengagement Compact

From Today's Chronicle of Higher Education 

Here the argument isn't so much about the intensity of the teaching and learning but rather about the move away from traditional approaches which produce critical thinking, toward vocational approaches that produce narrow competence only.
The Gutting of Gen Ed

Campus 

Strategic Plan - Goals

Goals, Intitiatives & Metrics | Illinois Strategic Plan via kwout

Current Initiatives - Campus Conversation

Campus Conversation | Undergraduate Education | Office of the Provost, University of Illinois via kwout

What is your nature?

Quote Details: Eleanor Roosevelt: I think that somehow,... - The Quotations Page via kwout

Two Views about How Engagement Might Be Generated (from Psychology)

Learning is hard work - Carol Dweck Mindset

Learning comes from self-actualization (Maslow) or from finding flow (Csikszentmihalyi)

Perhaps something for next semester - A discussion group

Announcement from last year

Inside Higher Ed piece

If you are interested please either say so as a comment to this post or send me an email.

When should risk averse people take on risk they can't diversify?

Self-protection means taking action to lower the probability of loss, when there are limits to self-insurance and there is no commercial insurance offered.  The questions we want to get at here are:

(a)  Sometimes, does the individual desire to self-protect get in the way of taking on socially desirable risks?

(b)  What, if anything, can be done about this?

Here are a couple of examples to illustrate:

(1)  Grant System Leads Cancer Researchers to Play It Safe.  The big deal issue here is how to evaluate the next grant proposal written by the researcher.  The prior track record matters, a lot.  In other words, if under the previous grant the researcher could show that good results were obtained that serves as a strong credential for the next grant.  In turn, that encourages the research to be less ambitious in the previous grant proposal, so success is more likely.

(2)  Underdogs in sports competitions should be risk seeking, to maximize their chances of winning.  Favorites should be risk averse.   But many coaches, whether underdog or favorite, coach not to lose.  Can you provide a rationale for that?

What other forms of self-protection do we see in the workplace or in the classroom?

The dark side of being trusting

We've talked about this a little bit in class, in the sense that there needs to be some bonding experience up front for trust to be created.  But we never asked what a sufficient bonding experience looks like, and what happens when we make mistakes and start trusting too early.  The linked piece is a good read, in part because it shows we are all potentially at risk of being scammed by somebody else.  Incidentally, the second sentence in the paragraph below gives some insight as to why Economics is sometimes referred to as "The Dismal Science."

Born to Be Conned - The New York Times via kwout

PowerPoint Template for Elevator Speech

We will review this presentation in class today.  It should help get you going on the last part of the project, the (virtual) elevator speech.

Last Year's Final

You can use this for practice.  We will review it in class next week.