"engaged learning" (re-posted from Feb. 2008)

I realize that I have been barking up the wrong tree. Here I am trying to fix education when I suddenly realized that all you need is a good marketing campaign. Why do real change when you can just say that have done it?

It was tonight’s Presidential Debate sponsored by Cleveland State University that taught me this. Behind the speakers there is a sign that says: Cleveland State University: Engaged Learning. I noticed it because NBC has been using it for a backdrop in the last few days.

Now I know nothing about Cleveland State but I am quite sure that it has boring lectures, absurd requirements, many professors who don’t care, and students who are just looking to get through the system by jumping whatever hoops are put in front of them, just as is the case at every university I have ever known.

So I wondered if they actually did anything different at dear old CSU and I went to their website to find out. This is what engaged learning is:

At CSU, Engaged Learning means that whether you are a student, faculty member or staff, you can expect to be an active participant in your learning experience. You can expect to engage in ways that will differentiate your experience at CSU from older, larger, and less diverse learning institutions. You can expect your learning experience at CSU to be distinctive.

OK. Not bad. “How,” I wondered.

In four important ways I learned. From the website:

1. An engaged learning logo will be on all communications materials. CSU will unveil a new advertising campaign this Spring.
2. The $200 million-plus master plan is remaking the main campus of Cleveland State University
3. CSU offers more than 140 opportunities to be engaged on campus through a myriad of organizations formed around common interests.
4. A website for engaged learners where they can say what they like about their CSU experience.

And that’s it folks. No new kinds of courses. No new kinds of experiences so that courses and tests can be eliminated. No re-thinking of what college should be and what they students need to learn how to do. No change of any actual kind. Just money spent on advertising and buildings. Of course, this is real change from my experience. Yale, Stanford, and Northwestern don’t advertise (except for revenue producing programs.)

But the marketing phrase is so nice: engaged learning!

I wonder how much they spent on this in lieu of spending on building realistic learning environments.

Death to the Standardistas! (re-posted from Feb, 2008)

The more things change the more they stay the same. Or more accurately, the more we try to change things, the more people who misunderstand the problems in education try to keep things the same. Today’s case in point: entrepreneurship education.

Some months ago, we were able to gather some top business and academic people to sit for a day and do a high level design for a story centered, learn by doing, on line curriculum in entrepreneurship for high school, meant to take up the whole of one year. We heard about a foundation that was interested in funding entrepreneurship education so we sent them our design, which was, more or less an attempt to start a business in a Second Life kind of world and compete with other students in that world. Before that part, the students took on certain business analysis projects to get them ready, and in the final part they tried a real project on the web.

We were told by the foundation that looked at our design that we had not paid attention to the National Content Standards for Entrepreneurship Education!

Of course, we hadn’t. We had never heard of them. So, it was with some trepidation that I went on line to take a look. I say it this way because standardistas are always wrongheaded and evil. Why? Let me count the ways in which standards are a disaater.

1. They tell you what you must teach and therefore allow no possibility of doing things differently.
2. They are always testing-oriented.
3. They always say what the student must understand and must know and must be able to explain which is a code for we will tell him this and then he will tell it back to us.
4. They invariably do not allow for freedom on the part of the student to get interested in one thing while not being interested in another.
5. They are made by a committee that always insists on listing all the things any person in that field must know without realizing that knowledge comes after doing not before.

So, knowing my prejudices, now let me show you what I found. Here are some the skills listed that every students must have:

Explain the need for entrepreneurial discovery
Discuss entrepreneurial discovery processes
Use external resources to supplement entrepreneur's expertise
Explain the need for business systems and procedures
Explain the need for continuation planning
Value diversity
Conduct self-assessment to determine entrepreneurial potential
Maintain positive attitude
Explain the concept of human resource management
Explain the nature and scope of operations management
Explain the nature of effective communications
Address people properly
Treat others fairly at work
Interpret business policies to customers/clients
Use basic computer terminology
Compress or alter files
Explain the nature of stress management
Determine file organization
Explain the concept of scarcity
Explain the law of diminishing returns
Describe types of market structures
Read and interpret a pay stub
Explain legal responsibilities of financial institutions
Explain the rights of workers
Describe use of credit bureaus
Develop job descriptions
Encourage team building
Describe the elements of the promotional mix

There were well over one hundred of these. And, they would, if actually paid attention to, get my nomination for the most boring curriculum ever invented in a fundamentally learn by doing field. Further there would be lots of tests, each one saying explain this and describe that.

The lesson here is simple. As soon as standardistas get a hold of a curriculum it will be turned into the garbage that has always been our school system – one where knowing, explaining, and describing, always win out over doing and learning from one’s own mistakes. The facts and noting but the facts.

Too bad. I kind of like this field. Kids really would have enjoyed running their own businesses in simulation and in reality.

Note to Mr. Foundation Head: After you blow millions on garbage entrepreneurial education by boring and testing students to death just like we have always done, and don’t produce even one more entrepreneur, and don’t deter even one more kid from dropping out, don't come crying to me