Discovery!

In 1998 I added a number of hands-on, active learning activities to the course Introduction to Networked Information Systems. This transition opened a number of doors for students to gain a more practical understanding of the components that make up computers and networks, and to discover some of the challenges in working with the technology. While relatively controlled, the unpredictable nature of working with technology assured that every semester brought its share of “learning moments” in which the students and I would have to work together to solve problems. In the Fall of 2000, a service-learning component was also added to the course in which students refurbished donated computers, set them up into small labs, and delivered these labs to community organizations working within economically distressed communities around Illinois, and especially within East St. Louis, Illinois. The nature of the work meant that students would often strike off in unique, unpredicted directions in order to appropriately setup the computer labs for their commuity partners. This further increased the number of learning moments.

During these learning moments, we would occasionally reach a point where I, as the instructor, would perform a sequence of steps that would resolve the problem. Students would ask me how I knew precisely what to do to address that problem. While many times I could describe what I observed and why I chose to take certain steps, there were times when my very unsatisfactory answer was “gut instinct”. Students didn’t like hearing this answer, and I felt uncomfortable giving it, but I also didn’t have a good explanation for how I seemed to be able to do what others couldn’t readily do. I needed to find a better answer.

At the time, I had been reading “The Dragon Riders of Pern”, fiction that included characters filling roles as apprentice, journeyman, and master. I began to reflect on my own childhood working in my family’s sawmill as a youth. I realized that I had served as an apprentice under my dad during those childhood years, eventually working my way up in status and responsibility at the job. An advantage of being an apprentice is that you are assigned rather menial tasks that provide you with a lot of time to observe. You begin to tune into the rhythm and music of the craft. Certain loud clashes went seemingly unnoticed by the others in the facility, while a slight, almost inaudible change in pitch of a constant sound might bring about great scurrying of everyone available. Over time, I found I began to adopt similar responses, and began to understand the unremarkable noises from the signs of significant problems. Indeed, over time I internalized these responses to the point where I couldn’t tell a friend visiting why I responded as I did. I reasoned this might be what is meant by gut instinct.

The question then became, short of an extended apprenticeship, how could such lessons be taught. Over time, I came to realize that a core skill students needed was one they already possessed, that of troubleshooting. Or that of the scientific method. Or that of the inquiry process. Or as one student who had served in the military once remarked, the OODA-loop — the military equivalent. For purposes of my class, I distilled it down to four basic steps:

• Observe — use all your senses to take in as much information as you can;
• Think — consider the various possible causes;
• Plan — consider how you might test each possible cause considered, as well as which tests might be easiest to run or most likely to succeed; and
• Act — perform the selected test, then observe, think, plan, and act.

It seems rather obvious now that gut instinct is really just a very rapid application of the above four steps, combined with an historical perspective that allows a person to rule out many of the possible causes as unlikely and narrow in on the most likely causes. Still, for me this was a discovery that helped transform my teaching in a way that allowed me to empower the students very early on in the semester.

I can say that students don’t always appreciate the empowerment — at times they would be much happier to receive simple cheatsheets that they can carry with them and that would fix the problems. And in truth there is a fine balance between strongly encouraging them to practice the troubleshooting skills vs. pushing them over the edge and into unrecoverable frustration. Identifying when to step in and provide more guidance, vs. when to help them ask salient questions and think through the process is a key part of the art of teaching in my mind. But when practiced well, I find I now am able to help encourage the development of gourmet chefs who can walk into a situation, identify the needs and resources, and combine them to produce a meal worthy of a fine restaurant, as opposed to someone who reads the box every time they make spaghetti.

My Teaching Influences

In a recent meeting, I was asked about my background as a teacher and the specific influences that led me to apply service-learning as a pedagogical tool. While my mom was the first to encourage me to continually use reflection as a means for personal improvement, much of the mentoring that contributes directly to my current pedagogical techniques occurred during my undergraduate training at Anderson University. Anderson is a small Christian liberal arts University in central Indiana. The school emphasizes discovery and service throughout its various programs.

While many courses emphasized discovery, one course in particular served especially as a model for my service learning coursework. In 1986 I took an Urban Ministries course at Anderson. During week 1 of the course, we spent 8 hours a day in the classroom discussing various related scholarly works. During week 2, we spent our time in New York City meeting various community leaders and activists, and assisting various services projects for the underserved in New York City. During week 3, we spent our time in Washington, D.C. doing much the same. This course served as a valuable case study on the integration of study and action, service learning, and applied reflection, to build a rich learning environment.

But many of the other aspects of my teaching style and techniques come directly from my mentors in the psychology department at Anderson.

From Curt Leech I learned not only how to methodically approach a problem using the scientific method, but also the value of an open door policy that invites students to come and share both their academic and personal problems. As he became involved in our lives in school and play he used a holistic approach to foster a richer learning environment for the students. Students felt Curt cared not only about them as students, but as individuals. He adapted his techniques to meet students where they were at, learning their interests and sometimes joining them outside the academe to further strengthen those relationships. Curt also helped me to gain a healthy respect for the scientific method, and technology more generally, as a tool and not a solution.

From Bill Farmen I learned the value of teaching concepts and addressing the root of a given problem. Whether in learning ANOVAs by writing a spreadsheet template to do the calculations or by handing me a book to learn how to read philosophy texts when I struggled in his Philosophy of Psychology course, his training methods helped me to develop skills that have served me well whatever duties I’m assigned. Bill also helped me gain an appreciation for philosophy as another tool to study questions
that face us daily.

From Lee Griffith I have modeled many of my teaching techniques, such as the use of outlines provided to the students prior to class and then presented on overhead to help facilitate the learning process when many
new concepts and terms are introduced each week. But I also learned the value of mentoring students to think logically and clearly about problems and then to strategically work to address those problems. Lee helped me to understand that the scientific method could be a valuable tool for personal and social change, that this is a skill to be learned, and that it is more effective to teach these skills than it is to criticize
students for being undisciplined.

Beyond the above influences, self-reflection and student evaluations have been important factors guiding the development of my courses over the years. Further, during the fall, 2007, I participated in a reading group on service-learning. I have also found the dissertation by Junghyun An, a recent doctoral graduate from the Curriculum and Intruction department at the University of Illinois, helpful as I redesigned my primary course, Introduction to Networked Systems. Dr. An’s dissertation was an ethnographic study of that course performed primarily in 2004. It has helped me significantly to apply a more formal framework for my service-learning activities.

Building a Program of Service Learning

I had a great meeting today with Anke Voss and Noah Lenstra. We discussed a number of points about effective implementation of service learning that will be summarized elsewhere. But one topic of special note highlighted in our discussion is the need for a more integrative approach to service learning implementation.

My service learning activities typically occur under the ESLARP umbrella, as has Anke’s. And while there certainly is some sharing between classes that occurs following dinner on Friday nights, this is fairly superficial. Some sharing also occurs through newsletters put out at the end of each semester, and through occasional joint presentations.

Our discussion did not dismiss or diminish the value of these experiences, but instead pointed towards a need for a more substantive interaction between participants in ESLARP that would deepen the learning for all involved. In my class, “Introduction to Networked Systems”, almost since semester one I have stressed reflection at both the individual and project group level. More recently, I have been refining ways in which the class comes together as a whole to participate in meaningful reflection during the course of the semester. At first, this was group presentations following the two trips to East St. Louis. This past semester, when we stayed nine days/six nights in East St. Louis, we had class-wide reflections on a nightly basis. By the final night, the depth of the reflections had grown considerably, as did the learning that occurred through them.

I believe the conclusion Anke, Noah, and I were coming to in our discussion today was the need to take one further step; to move beyond the rich reflective process that is beginning to happen at the class level and add a reflective process that occurs at the program level. We envisioned a process that would facilitate a more holistic approach to learning and public engagement that better emphasized the multifaceted approaches that are needed to facilitate social inclusion for members of disenfranchised communities.

In the book Expanding Boundaries: Service and Learning, Andrew Furco summarizes work by Robert Sigmon regarding types of service learning. Using capital letters to distinguish emphasis, Sigmon describes a range of implementations of service learning, from service-learning, in which the goals of service and learning are completely separate, to SERVICE-LEARNING, in which the goals of service and learning are completely balanced and integrated. It seems difficult or unlikely that the type of reflective process we were envisioning during today’s meeting could be accomplished by bringing together students participating in service-learning courses that completely separate the two components, or service-LEARNING courses that emphasize primarily learning, or SERVICE-learning courses that primarily emphasize service. Optimally, courses would be identified in which SERVICE-LEARNING fully integrates and balances both components. With this common approach to discovery and engagement, students would likely be primed to benefit from the broader contextual realm fostered through inter-class reflections.

We also discussed some of the environmental conditions needed to foster such an inter-class reflective activity. Both Anke and I have found that students working together on a project seem to naturally participate in a shared experience and reflection as they work on projects at their host sites. These sites are often in informal settings that feel relaxed and contribute to open sharing. This is often not the case when students are brought together in conference- or classroom settings. Of note, my Summer I offering of “Intro to Network Systems” was the first time I felt the class as a whole really came together and actively participated in a broader, but deep, reflective process. It is also the first time that we stayed at the Hubbard House, a facility in East St. Louis that has intentionally built spaces aimed at creating relaxed environments for meaningful sharing amongst groups. Can such class-wide reflections, let alone inter-class reflections, be facilitated at the Ramada, or back in Champaign? This is an open question that will require further consideration.

At the end of our discussion, we also brainstormed some on the concept of a “Community Informatics Studio”. The idea is to provide a place where not only the reflections, but the actual project work, could transcend a single course. Some of the newer projects we’ve started considering in East St. Louis do not easily fit into a single course, or indeed department, as a project, but move into a broader Community Informatics realm that requires a multidisciplinary approach. While similar to the current LIS490CIC, “Community Informatics Corp”, one possibility would be that this studio would tap into students who are currently taking other courses and would encompass their final service-learning projects within those courses. Another option would be that this course would be comprised of students who have come from other classes, whose projects are to design specific projects for these other courses, and thereby serve as a starting point for the creation of new service-learning opportunities for other courses. Both may provide a means for broader implementation of service-learning in GSLIS (and other departmental courses) and provide opportunities for students to participate in multi-disciplinary project teams. But if the course were to provide a place where students who are taking a range of students in a current semester come together to work on a multidisciplinary community informatics service-learning project, the studio might also foster the type of cross-class reflections that could further enhance the learning process for all students during the semester.