Category: General

I pay attention when the general public is told something about higher ed. I am an educational psychologist so the topics are sometimes relevant to my teaching or research. I also am interested in how the area in which I work is presented to the public.

In 1961, the average full-time student at a four-year college in the United States studied about twenty- four hours per week, while his modern counterpart puts in only fourteen hours per week.

In mid-summer, the results of a research study by Babcock & Marks (prepublication PDF) received general attention. This does not happen often. The lead sentence from the abstract appears above. The amount of time college students spend studying has declined dramatically. (BTW – the authors use the word “curmudgeon” in the first paragraph of their article. How often does that happen?). The authors examine and reject some possible explanations. For example, technology does not appear to have made students more efficient learners. Only a fraction of the decline can be attributed to a higher proportion of college students who work.

So even though we lack the data to observe directly whether college has been “dumbed down,” we are able to draw from the data a solid conclusion about university practices: standards for effort have plummeted—in practice, if not in word.

I think their conclusion translates as – whatever has changed on the instructional side, college profs have lowered standards resulting in less student effort.

Now, this could have been the end of this story (and my post) – BUT NO!

UND, my institution, topped one of the lists generated by the Princeton Review. We are #1. We are #1. We study the least. Wait, this may not be a good thing. Just so those in the area do not scoff. We are also the only ND school Princeton Review considers for any ranking.

So, studying is declining. This decline may indicate a lowering of standards. UND students study the least. I am not sure I like where this logic exercise is going.

This topic (the general finding, not the UND data point) has generated a good deal of discussion and analysis.
Boston Globe
Atlantic Wire
Mother Jones

I do think this should be treated as a serious topic (generally and locally). I am not a big fan of survey data – participants can exaggerate or give answers to create an impression. Is indicating you don’t study much at your school fall within the same category as bragging that you school is a great party school?

Here is my take (no data here) as a prof. I think profs are pressured from two directions. First, there is the “I don’t want to buy and then read that expensive and large book” complaint. This is student pressure. Then there is the colleague pressure (with support from some students) that condemns lecturing as boring and passive. We should expect students to read and then discuss and explore in class. The combination may be deadly. If there is a resistance to reading and there is a resistance to presenting what you have left is discussion of personal opinions. We used to call this shooting the bull (not sure why – I did attend a land grant college) and it was what you did after studying when you walked to the campus town bar for a nightcap. I tend to think of a heavy emphasis on class discussion as “studying with your students”. This is not necessarily a bad thing if students come to class with something to study. Perhaps out of class and in class studying should be combined as a single variable. But, just what would be the focus of such effort?

I really hope this topic receives more attention. … enough of this writing stuff, back to reading the student’s book for the semester. …bah

[Cross posted from Curmudgeon Speaks]

My start in combining educational technology and research was many years ago – the mid-1980s. I was interested in the development of reading skills (upper elementary) and was attempting to develop games that would both develop skill and generate data on performance. At the time (Apple II and II+), the technology experience for the user was predominately text-based. For someone interested in reading, this seemed perfectly acceptable. What the computer offered was  interactivity and it was this combination of words and actions that was appealing to me. Early on exploring the new world of personal technology and learning to program in the process, I encountered text-based adventure games. For me, a basic concept began to emerge. The moves one makes in adventure games depends on your comprehension of the text. Existing games involved more than basic comprehension, but this was mostly a function of purposeful vagueness used to make the games challenging for older players. To emphasize reading skill, we decided to create games in which understanding the “story” made certain moves more productive. Success (leveling up, solving problems) should be associated with comprehending the text of the game. So, our earliest games were a combination of the text-based adventure games of the time and “choose your own” adventure books. I found an early entry in my vita related to this research.

Grabe, M. (1988).  The instructional potential of microcomputer adventure games. Journal of Computer-Based Instruction, 15, 72-77.

I don’t think the journal is still alive. It was the research outlet for an organization I remember as ADCIS. I know this organization was absorbed by another. At some point, technology became main stream and we started publishing in more traditional research journals.

I still like the idea of connection understanding to action; i.e., because I understand what I have read I can do something more successfully. The connection is immediate and embedded when understanding can be applied to making a better choice.

This is a long and possibly unnecessary connection to something I discovered just yesterday. I was scanning the links that “magically” appear on my personal desktop home page and noticed a reference to adventure games on the iPod (actually the reference was to the iPhone but those of us living in North Dakota do not purchase iPhones). The link was to an NPR story on U-Venture repurposing classic “Choose your own adventures” for the iPhone and iPad. It is an interesting interview (read or listen). I immediately spent $3.99 to give it a try (there are other text adventures available, but I was interested in the U-Venture approach).

This is an interesting example for anyone who wants to explore the experience on an iPod or iPad (or iPhone if not in ND). The notion of
reading with a purpose (and a consequence) still makes sense to me. To me, there is something unique in the “choose your own adventure” genre
(what qualifies as a genre anyway). So, if you are looking for content to address the development of comprehension skills and maybe ESL skills,
I think there are some interesting possibilities here.

I was in a good mood Sunday morning. Our youngest daughter was married Saturday evening and there is something that is so positive about the celebration of a couple beginning a life together. My feet hurt, but life felt good. Then, I made the mistake of turning on the television to watch some Sunday morning political news and banter. What a downer! I understand the country has some serious problems, but to listen to the various positions it would seem like there are no possible solutions. It sometimes seems like a reality TV show in which comic and self-absorbed characters purposefully encourage drama rather than behave in a rational fashion. How can problem-solving emerge out of such a situation?

David Warlick seemed to be having a similar crisis of faith and I like the perspective he ended up proposing. I think we have a responsibility to others that requires those who have acquired more to give more back. I support universal health care – it seems hideous to me that anyone would be willing to turn his back on the basic needs of others. I don’t know if attempting to salvage the investment banking system was the right thing to do or not, but the problems here were not created by the lower or middle class citizens. I am also tired of the complaints directed at educators. It seems unfair to lay blame for poorly performing schools while simultaneously cutting staff and funding. Ante up folks – you have a responsibility for the other guy.

I read once that great researchers pay special attention not so much when the obvious happens or when they find nothing, but when they encounter an outcome that runs contrary to what they expected. It is in these situations that there is the chance to really learn something.

A couple of reports this week revealed results that might offer this opportunity. Both were reported in secondary sources and the original sources are presently difficult to find.

1) New teachers are not necessarily any more likely to engage their students with technology (summarized in eSchool News).

A quote from ISTE guy Don Knezek speculates that:

There could be two reasons for this, Knezek added: Either they are coming out of teacher preparation programs unprepared to integrate technology effectively, or they’re entering a school environment where they’re not encouraged to do so.

I read a study reaching a similar conclusion some years ago and this earlier study offered a somewhat different conclusion. This study speculated that technology integration requires some unique educator skills and new teachers are operating on a type of Maslow’s hierarchy (taking care of survival skills first – I take credit for the Maslow reference, but it does seem to fit). If I remember correctly, this study determined that at about 5 years of teacher experience of so you see heavier student use. I take this explanation to be different from either of the explanations offered by Knezek.

Counter intuitive insight – we may be wrong in assuming growing up with tech is that important. It may be the non-tech aspects of integration in combination with the general school demands that must be developed. I am not certain I blame this on training programs unless school-based experiences (e.g., student teaching) are included. Expertise with any complex skill requires considerable experience to mature.

2) Sending computers home will extend the school day, reduce SES access differences, and improve achievement.

To the contrary, the NY Times offers a piece mostly focused on a collection of studies that go against these predictions even demonstrating disadvantages.

Counter intuitive insight – home access to the Internet is just a tool and tools can be applied to various tasks. Spending time exploring personal interests my even take time away from doing traditional homework. Perhaps we assumed too much and we should structure out of school tasks to take advantage of the tools provided.