You brought WHAT to your Academic Open House?

It is less than a month until UW Oshkosh’s first Academic Open House Week begins. February 12-15 is the big week. In case you haven’t heard, Academic Open House Week is like a series of parties, thrown by departments and academic programs on campus.

All Quest II students are asked to visit at least three open houses, but all current students should come to at least one. Invite your majors, your minors, your groupies, your alumni, even your friends in other departments. This is a chance to show off and celebrate our disciplines.

A big part of the goal is to help first-year students (more than 20% of whom typically leave our campus after one year) to see what we offer, to get to know the academic opportunities on this campus better. Many of these students do not have a major yet, or haven’t even considered a minor or a certificate. Some imagine that their dream program is on some other college campus. Some have known their major since they were in middle school. They get here and they might hate that major or they might love it.

 

Academic Open House Week is for all of those students. It is also for the upper division students getting ready to leave. By chatting with each other, with faculty, with lecturers, maybe even with alumni, these students can get ideas, volunteer or internship opportunities, job tips, research projects, cool course tips, etcetera. How many opportunities do our students have to do this with us?

 

 

As of today, 100% of colleges, departments, and academic programs have said they would participate in Academic Open House Week. Many departments have thought a lot about what that open house would look like. Others are still planning.

Towards the end of last semester, a large number of us got together to plan our open houses, brainstorming about what to expect and what to bring to our open house. Here, in a random list form, are the ideas I wrote down from that meeting. A roomful of staff, faculty, and lecturers from all kinds of different departments and academic programs said they were planning to bring these to their open houses…

1. smartphone apps for mapping
2. a map of the department
3. a t-shirt raffle
4. signs
5. treats
6. people: faculty, students
7. lab demonstrations
8. a Steps tracking poster
9. student online presences
10. puzzles
11. magic tricks explained by math
12. large felt emojis, as examples of language and linguistics
13. a book raffle
14. alumni (including female alumni)
15. research on Black Friday
16. software that supports the blind
17. microphone for spoken word
18. projections of youtube
19. Oshkosh Scholar research examples
20. fake money
21. reasons to do a minor
22. a wheel of minors students can spin
23. a magnetic stirrer
24. dry ice
25. counterfeit currency detector
26. research posters
27. dessert teas
28. calming apps
29. coping strategies
30. a therapy dog
31. highlights of what alumni are doing
32. a 50th anniversary celebration of Journalism
33. old-school technology
34. Tchotchkes from world travel
35. grad student posters
36. Toys, like a two-liter tornado

I was flabbergasted by all these good ideas. I can’t wait to visit as many open houses as I can squeeze in. Invite your majors and minors. Let’s get out there and celebrate our academic opportunities!

Gabe Loiacono

PS: Academic Open House Week has not happened yet. So there are no pictures of it. These pictures came from other cool events on our campus.

FYE Teaching Tips from a room of Pros

Yesterday, a large number of faculty and lecturers got together. Most are seasoned teachers of Quest I, Comm 111, or WBIS 188. A few are new to these classes: intrepid souls, taking on a new teaching challenge. We talked about peer mentors, about changes to the USP, and about how to run a first-year college class. Listed below is a compilation of tips from this group. I (G. Loiacono) included every tip I got, making only minor edits and organizing them into three categories. I think you will find it quite useful.

Writing the Syllabus/Designing the course

• Write the syllabus for the class you imagine your students need and that you would most like to teach. Then cut 1/2 of the assignments. Rewrite. Cut one more assignment. You and your students will be much happier.
• You need an easy button and so do your students. Build flexibility into your schedule, assignments, and day. Often our first-year students need more time to absorb what is going on outside their work for your class than they have. Giving them, and yourself, spaces to breathe, talk, and grapple with the material in your class deeply (rather than get to everything in the space you have alotted) will result in their achieving your learning outcomes in a more meaningful and lasting way.
• Make assignments small and incremental so they budget time automatically.
• Assign work in small portions, e.g. break up long-term projects into small sections.
• Focus on basic writing skills, without assuming that they learned how to write properly in high school.
• Don’t focus excessively on your own content. Incorporate your Peer Mentor. Give students ample opportunity to participate and discuss with each other, with you, and with the Peer Mentor.
• Reduce content and increase depth.
• Offer a re-do/second chance during the semester.
• Give multiple assessments of different types to make sure students are understanding material.
• Listen to – and incorporate – student interests/concerns into course content.
• Build flexibility into the course calendar and assignment sequence to respond to student interests/concerns.
• Cover less material than you think you would like to. Less is more. Build in spare time or free days in the syllabus. These end up being catch-up or let’s-catch-our-breath days.

During Class Meetings or One-on-One Meetings

• Engage students with the course material immediately — don’t spend Day 1 going over the syllabus.
• Be personable and real. Make them meet you in groups/pairs. Have questions for them ready. Have stories about yourself ready. Maybe have coffee and/or candy.
• Explain what a syllabus is. Break the high school hand holding.
• Tell them checking email is important and why!
• Learn their names!
• Use interactive, mixed media. Set up a story or scenario (lecture), look at a picture on Powerpoint, discuss, look at a clip from a movie, tv, or documentary, discuss, look at written documents, answer questions in writing, discuss.
• I tell students my story of growing up poor and being a first-generation college student. This helps them relate and connect. I was born on welfare and neither parent graduated from high school.
• I try to stand at the door and greet and/or bid adieu to the class every class period.
• Give extremely detailed (step-by-step) instructions for assignments.
• Remind them, remind them again, and yet again (e.g. co-curricular activities).
• Repeat yourself.
• Create student groups; don’t let students self select/create own groups.
• Do community-building, from ice-breakers to sharing personal/autobiographical lecture with group.
• Give students opportunities to lead class (workshop-style) and speak in academic settings.
• There is never too much repetition/redundancy in regard to just about anything (e.g. course content, university resources, registration, etcetera).
• Learn everyone’s name. (Use a name card if necessary.
• Require students to meet with you early and often.
• Get outside.
• Demonstrate as much as possible about resources and assignments.

Big Picture stuff

• Don’t assume that students know things that are obvious to us: where the library is, how to take notes, even how to log on to TitanWeb.
• Try to remember what it was like to be a new student.
• Don’t lose your enthusiasm even if you taught the same thing 100 times.
• Constantly remind them that college is supposed to be hard work – that growth comes from hardship and so can joy! I always add that I will not dumb down; I will only maintain the high expectations that they can achieve if they’re willing!
• Expect questions from students you have not thought of.
• Don’t forget that your students are 18-19 years old. Don’t be surprised when they don’t understand your cultural references… and vice versa.
• Communication, communication, communication! I try not to “hand hold” so much as go from a team approach. With more of a team approach, we’re all in “it” together and reaching out (on the students’ part) in office hours and/or email, skype, etcetera can be less daunting. I do remind myself that these people are just leaving high school too. I try to keep my expectations reasonable.
• Tell them we all make mistakes (e.g. miss a deadline, forget something) but what matters is how you deal with it (apologize, set things right asap).
• Don’t assume that they know more than they know. Break down academic jargon.
• Remember that everyone has a different background/experiences.
• Patience is a virtue.
• TRY to be patient! Try to remember how you felt in your first college class!
• Be firm but be fair. (Yes I know this is a hard thing to balance.)

Participants in August 31, 2017 Quest I – Comm 111 – WBIS Workshop

Something New in Quest II

It’s August right now, and Quest II is a long way away for most of us. Well over 1,000 U.W. Oshkosh students will take this course in the Spring, but fewer than 50 are signed up for the class this Fall.

Nonetheless, it is a good time for us to remember that Quest II for this year’s students will be a little bit different from previous iterations. We are still offering the same solid introductory courses aimed at second-semester students, with signature questions and ethical reasoning. This year, however, Quest II will also include a future-oriented first-year experience. Would it be unwise for me to suggest another acronym for our campus jargon? Can I call this future-oriented first-year experience FOFYE?

What makes this FYE future-oriented is its insistence that second-semester students think about their futures at U.W. Oshkosh, their future careers, and their future lives in general.

• Every Quest II course will invite an alum to speak with students, answer questions, and help students imagine where they might be years after graduation.
• Every Quest II student will connect with someone in Career Services, whether that be to craft a resumé, learn to network, hone an elevator pitch, or something else.
• Departments and programs will be invited to host open houses during the third week of the Spring semester, showcasing majors, minors, certificates, emphases, faculty, lecturers, and student representatives. Current and prospective students will be invited. Each Quest II student will attend at least three open houses.
• Quest II students will experience the research and creative opportunities on this campus, whether they do a small research project or learn the ethics of creativity and research in your field or attend Celebration of Scholarship or report on scholarship that more advanced undergraduates are doing here.
• Finally, Quest II courses will encourage students to build their futures here in at least one other way, whether through the Study-Intern Abroad Fair, the Volunteer Fair, the Student Leadership and Involvement Center or elsewhere.

The goal behind this revision to Quest II is to offer a truly first-year experience, not just a first-semester experience. I also hope that it will help us retain more first-year students into their second-year.

Retention numbers have risen since the USP started, but they have not topped 80% yet. They could. (We are close.) What if more high-achieving students knew about the unusual opportunities to work on research and creative activity with our faculty and lecturers? What if students disappointed with their intended major (or at a loss to pick one) could find new majors more easily? What if students overwhelmed with the prospect of planning their futures could get help right in their required general education course? What if more students got more connected to our campus and opportunities before they went away for that first summer? Quest II should help with all of this more pointedly in the Spring of 2018.

So, if you are teaching Quest I, WBIS, or Comm 111 this Fall, tell your students what to expect in Spring 2018’s Quest II courses. If you would like to teach a Quest II course with these features, let the USP office know. If you have other ideas of best to shape first-year students’ programs, let’s talk about them. Our general education program is meant to be refined and revisited over the years, to do the best we can by our students.

Gabe Loiacono

Can Faculty/Lecturer Collaboration happen in Paired Courses?

Several years ago, I remember discussing the idea of “paired courses” as the university embarked on developing the University Studies Program. The idea was that the Communication Studies 111 course I teach would be paired with another Quest 1 course from another department like Women’s Studies, History, Political Science, Anthropology, etc.  Faculty and staff were asked to meet the instructor teaching the paired course and share syllabi, assignments, and their vision for the course. At the time I thought, “How will this work?” My colleagues and I sometimes teach four to five sections of public speaking in any given semester. When will we find time to collaborate?”

Several years later I can tell you that the collaboration that’s happened between faculty and staff might be one of the most exciting parts of the USP program. I won’t lie and tell you that I’ve formed a working relationship with every professor with whom I’ve been paired. I will say, however, that I’ve had meaningful dialogue with a number of my colleagues outside of the Comm. Studies Department and that collaboration can be both personally and professionally rewarding. To be honest, even though I enjoy it, collaboration often falls to the bottom of my “To Do” list. In a past work life, working as part of a team was crucial for the corporate communication departments to which I belonged. Certainly, collaboration is what I often miss most as a teacher.

My most recent collaboration involves my Art colleague, Emmet Sandberg, and my Communication Studies colleague, Angela Westphal. One day I learned that Emmet was having his art students draw big, blue octopuses in his introductory art course. It looked like lots of fun and I had to ask what he was doing. The activity focused somewhat on perception, a concept that’s often difficult to explain in the Quest 1 course, Interpersonal Communication. The three of us discussed the goals of the exercise and how it might apply to the concepts we’re teaching in our courses. To date, we’ve had students participate in the exercise four times with a lot of positive feedback. (This usually happens on a weeknight early in the fall before students become too busy.) I promise students some extra credit and a good time drawing with crayons and they tend to show up. Last year, we wrote a proposal (see below) for the National Communication Association’s (NCA) forum, “Good Ideas for Teaching Students, and we were happy to present the teaching idea in November to the NCA’s annual national conference in Philadelphia.

Next, we’re thinking about how Emmet’s students might benefit from what Angela and I teach in our communication courses. Certainly, his students can learn more about perception by studying the topic from a Communication Studies perspective.

I welcome your feedback. If you have any questions or suggestions about the activity below, feel free to contact me at rolainja@uwosh.edu.

Stephanie Rolain-Jacobs, Senior Lecturer

Department of Communication Studies

 

Engaging Diverse Communities To Avoid Apocalypse

In Octavia Butler’s dystopian novel Parable of the Sower, a new president’s striking down of all regulations for corporations leads to the building of walls separating those with resources from those without. It eventually leads to the creation of new forms of slavery. For Butler, the recipe for surviving the imminent apocalypse is clear: acquire intercultural knowledge and competence. In the story, a diverse group of people coming together of different races, classes and genders leads to increased understanding of differences. Ultimately, the multiple perspectives and skills within the group and their ability to collaborate across differences ensure their ability to survive as those around them perish.

Butler’s dystopian vision provides us with the reason that the USP’s emphasis on intercultural knowledge and competence is so important. It provides students with the skills, abilities and attitudes essential to the healthy functioning of our democracy. With it, students will be able to communicate across differences and value multiple perspectives. These capabilities are essential to collaborative problem-solving. Moreover, they are abilities that have the potential to ensure just, fair and peaceful solutions to conflicts currently facing our nation.

In the USP, instructors teaching the Intercultural Knowledge and Competence Signature Question in Quest III are engaging diverse communities as their community partners or inviting members of diverse communities into the classroom to teach students as experts. Only through having such real life experiences of interacting with people from cultures outside their own will students gain in their intercultural competence.

Playing off of Butler and her dystopian novels, I provide some suggestions below for how to optimize students’ experience of engaging with diverse communities in Quest III.

1. Break Down Walls. For Butler, walls are divisive and lead to apocalypse. Breaking them down leads to growth. In Quest III, breaking down walls between the University and the community partner is crucial. Developing civic engagement opportunities for students that have the ability to transform them depends on asking members of diverse communities to collaborate on them from the beginning. It’s essential to ask community members what they want from the project and how the project should unfold. Seeking this same level of input at every stage of the project increases its effectivenesss. In my own course, students interview Hmong women elders who escaped the genocide in Laos, journeyed to refugee camps in Thailand and made their way to America, building a life from scratch here. In order to create this project, I collaborated with a number of campus community members who belong to the Hmong community. Together, we developed a project that would be valuable both to students and people in the Hmong community.
2. Assess the Situation and Plot a Way Through. In Butler’s novels, a character always assesses the gravity of the situation and plots a way through. At the beginning of class, it helps to assess students’ knowledge of the community with which they are about to engage. One approach is to give students a pre-test on their cultural competence. I ask students how much knowledge they possess about the history of the Hmong people, their cultural practices, beliefs and ways of knowing. More than anything, this assessment provides a snapshot of students’ self-perception of their own abilities and knowledge. It also provides insight into how to meet the students where they are at. Once we determine the level of our students’ understanding, we can begin to plan what we need to do to get them to the next level of cultural competence.
3. Understand Where You Came From. According to Butler, to survive the apocalypse, you have to know where you came from. In this way, you can both draw strength from your origins and discover your inaccurate assumptions. To become more culturally competent, students too must first understand their own culture and its shaping of them. In the discussions around this Signature Question in the professional development workshops for USP, instructors agreed that one of students’ first steps toward cultural competence should be exploration of their own culture(s). An early assignment, then, might direct students to reflect on one culture to which they belong as well as the assumptions they inherited through this culture. These forms of self-reflection will position them to see culture as shaping who they are and how they see.
4. Recognize the Matrix When You See It. In Butler’s dystopian novels, there always comes a moment when the main character realizes that they are living in a matrix, a terrifying illusion on a grand scale. Likewise, students’ gaining of intercultural knowledge requires developing an understanding of the illusions within which they are immersed. As an example, as part of their second assignment in my class, students take the Implicit Association Test offered by Harvard University: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html. Discussions of their score on this implicit bias test together with their analysis of a cultural institution that influenced their score, whether positively or negatively, lead students to begin to understand the matrix built around race in the U.S. This process of coming to awareness about their own thinking is crucial to students’ successful engaging with diverse communities.
5. “Embrace Diversity or Die.” Yeah, Butler wrote this. Her point is that monocultures are death cultures. Whether you agree or not with this dire prediction, it is important to prepare students for their experience of people from other cultures. This strategy both ensures the students experience more success and the community members have a more productive experience. In my own course, I invited members of the Hmong community on campus to class to provide an orientation for students. They provided students insight into Hmong women’s beliefs, history, strengths, and their contributions to both the Hmong community and the larger Oshkosh community. They also provided students with insight into ways to bridge differences between themselves and the women they were to interview. This knowledge better prepared them to interview the Hmong women and anticipate the benefits and potential challenges of doing so.
6. Recognize Men, Women and Trans People From Other Cultures as Heros. In Butler’s writing, men, women and trans people of color are the heroes of their own stories. Similarly, another important aspect of building a civic engagement is to go beyond stories of victimization. In my course, the Hmong women elders’ stories of surviving genocide were dramatic, from making rafts at the edge of the Mekong River as the Pathet Lao army advanced on them to watching loved ones shot to being on the run in the jungles of Laos for as many as 13 years. Students are very tempted to see the women only as victims because of stereotypes of Asian women as silent, submissive and passive. Yet, through discussions and assignments, students were able to see the heroism of these women. Thus, we should assist students in seeing that people from diverse communities are active agents of their own destinies and hold the power to teach them new ways of being in the world.
7. Lift Up Powerful But Often Unheard Voices. Butler points out that African American women are often stereotyped as the recipients of aid rather than the providers of it. When working with diverse communities, the project should move beyond situating the community members involved in the project as mere recipients of student’s services. For example, if there are public presentations of the Quest III students’ work, the community members should be an integral part of the presentation, preferably leaders of it. For the two times that I have run the course, Hmong women have kicked off the actual public presentation. This may seem odd in a context that foregrounds student work. Yet, it teaches students an important lesson: the Hmong women who they interviewed are not objects of study, they are the subjects of their own stories and, most importantly, they own the stories they are telling.
8. Prepare for the Unbelievable. In all Butler novels, the unbelievable is always bound to happen. It happens both in negative and positive ways. As students interact with members from diverse communities, providing mentors who observe the interactions and provide constructive feedback to students assists in creating a positive experience for all. In these projects, students are the face of our University community to members of the community with which they are interacting. Students need to have on-going communication about what intercultural competence looks like and have it modeled for them in real-life situations in order to best convey the spirit of the University. Students’ engagement with diverse communities can be one of the most powerful experiences for them in their academic career so far. It has the potential to change their thinking in dramatic and often unanticipated ways. Butler would say that providing students with collective intercultural experiences at UW Oshkosh has the potential to stave off apocalypse.

By Jordan Landry

Interim Director, Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

Associate Professor of English

Signature Question Coordinator for Intercultural Knowledge & Competence

The Internet and Your Brain

One topic I like to discuss with my Quest I students (and other students too, at times) is the effect that digital media and smart phones have on our study habits, attention spans, and everyday lives.  Students usually appreciate this discussion and it allows us to reflect on how our habits shape our ability to be successful in college.  I usually present the science writer Nicholas Carr’s ideas about “what the internet is doing to our brains.”  An easy way to present the ideas of Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows is in this 15-minute Lecture he did for The Economist magazine.  An even easier way is in this further simplification of his argument on youtube.

I tend to buy Carr’s arguments and most of my students do too.  What do you think?  How do you approach this topic with your students?

— Gabe Loiacono

BE A REWRITER: Questions to Encourage Reflection

There’s a quotation that I like to share with the students in my writing classes. It’s fairly recent, by J. Patrick Lewis, who is a children’s book author and former United States children’s poet laureate. In a few sentences, Lewis encapsulates what reflection is all about: doing it better.

If you say you want to be a writer . . . I applaud you. The next words out of your mouth should be, “But I promise to be a rewriter!” I don’t even know why we use the word “writer.” All the great writers in the world have been rewriters. So buy yourself a big wastebasket, and keep it filled.

Like Lewis, we all have big wastebaskets that we fill, and into which we toss in personal or professional mistakes or adjustments. We assess the merits of a new restaurant, the benefits of traveling to Florida in January, or the results of our latest half-marathon. They key point is that we ask ourselves, “What will I do next?” and “What can I do better?”

But unlike Lewis, I’d say that students shouldn’t throw the ideas away. Instead, use them to build something new. Let’s think of that wastebasket as a recycle bin. Reflection is about the learning process. While the word tends to be overused in education, some scholars claim that regular reflective journaling in education can be “transformational,” because it allows students to evaluate their previous work, record where the problems occurred, and then alter their attitudes, actions, and behaviors.

There is no single way to build reflection into the classroom; it might be an informal discussion or a formal written assignment.  In a classroom where instructors engage in scaffolding—incremental lessons that move students toward greater understanding of concepts—reflective questions and writing can appear at any point in the process. In addition, the questions can be applied to any discipline.

For example, set up a reflection about prior knowledge before a new unit. Ask whether students have any assumptions or preconceptions about the upcoming activity. Afterwards, they may consider whether any problems or conflicts were identified through the session—and how those related back to their assumptions. I often do this when approaching a new novel or set of poems in my literature courses; we judge the book by its cover (as well as its publication date and location). And since self-disclosure can be risky in open discussion, the students will write down their preconceptions on notecards. On the other hand, rather than a meta-cognitive activity structured around an academic question, some instructors elicit the personal feelings that might not otherwise be evident in the assignment:  What do you predict? What are your feelings (hesitant? excited?)? What was good or bad about the experience?

Instructors working with Quest III students who are undertaking community engagement projects have found that reflection is essential at all stages of the process. Students may have unrealistic expectations about how smoothly their volunteer experiences will unfold, and these expectations are born of inexperience. Thus, eliciting pre-conceptions about how they envision their role and the people with whom they will work should help them articulate, recall, and compare their actual experiences to their initial vision. The time spent on reflection will also help the students build narratives that can be used during job interviews, so the students will see the benefits beyond the classroom.

Some of the questions that we have used with students at the end of the community workday also ask them to predict connections to their future selves:

1. What are some new experiences, ideas, or facts that you learned today? How will you be able to use these in the future?

2. Do you believe that your actions had any impact in the community?

3. What problems or conflicts were identified through the session today? Were the problems social, environmental, or economic? What other factors were involved (such as laws, technology, and communication)? What are some possible solutions to the conflict? How does that solution affect different populations? Will they all be happy with the outcome?

4. From something that you learned today, express a contrasting perspective. Think about something that wasn’t mentioned or look at the issue from another viewpoint. Here are the lenses that you’ll be asked to use in USP Connect (English 300):

• Economy
• Society, including populations and social institutions
• Environment
• Culture, including arts, music, and humanities
• Technology
• Information and communication
• Government and laws

5. How have you challenged yourself to see things from new perspectives?

In the Department of English, we’ve recently added five questions for reflection into the first formal assignment for English 300 / Advanced Writing, Connect. The answers to these questions will be typed and turned in with the written assignment. These questions appear originally in an extensive document on reflection published by Edutopia, the George Lucas Educational Foundation.

• How much did you know about this subject before you started?
• Have you changed any ideas that you used to have about the subject?
• Which of your resources was especially helpful to answering your questions?
• What does this project reveal about you as a learner?
• Do you have any new goals, either for your education or for your writing?

(For many more useful questions, view the full document at: https://www.edutopia.org/pdfs/stw/edutopia-stw-replicatingPBL-21stCAcad-reflection-questions.pdf.)

With all these questions, it’s especially important that the reflection session builds a bridge between previous knowledge and the ways that students will challenge themselves o in the future. Application–“What will I do next?”–is as important as  important as assessment.

Process is often ephemeral. When we learn to do something, we often forget the steps we took to get to the point of fluency. Practically, I’ve been turning to GoogleDocs as a means for students to write, revise, revisit, share, and save reflective pieces, because the work will stay with them for several semesters and therefore across several courses and resumes, rather than being lost on a flash drive.

Allowing time for reflection in the university classroom not only gives students time to fill their recycle bins, but also provides them with creative, self-directed time to rummage through the bins and produce something new. So I ask you: What will you do next?

– Marguerite Helmers is Professor of English and Director of Advanced Writing / Connect. She teaches expository writing and British and Irish literature, and has led two study tours to Ireland with Quest III students. 

 

A Peer Mentor Perspective

During my time at UW Oshkosh, I worked as a peer mentor for a political science class, a history class, and an English class over a span of two semesters. My current role as a high school English teacher provides insight into post-secondary bound students’ perceptions of college academics and social life. This understanding of students’ concerns and expectations reinforces my conviction that peer mentors are an essential component of the USP, as they can help bridge the gap between where students actually are and where instructors need them to be.

I would guess that many instructors would envision the ideal student as one who actively engages with class material, comes prepared with insightful questions, and finds ways to make the content of the curriculum relevant to his or her own life. From the reality I’ve encountered, however, I find many students are reluctant to delve into anything outside of their declared major. In their minds, the value of a liberal arts education pales in comparison to their vision of getting in and out of school as quickly and cheaply as possible, equipped with only the specific information they think they will need to succeed in their chosen career. It is discouraging to see this mentality entrenched in many high school students and carried with them to the college level. Beginning in the later middle school years, students face an incredible amount of pressure to make decisions about what they want to do in life. To make the most of their education, they are told, they need to take classes focused on those career decisions. Several of the students I’ve taught began taking college classes as sophomores. They quit band, they quit chorus, they quit art, but they are certain these sacrifices will be worth it in the end. The idea is to save money, save time, get ahead, graduate and join the workforce sooner. As much as I admire focus and drive, this mentality leaves little room for exploration. These students have been taught to zero in on the experiences that will surely propel them toward future success and reject other things as superfluous. When they are faced with opportunities to explore signature questions or become involved in the community, they balk. Their schemas are disequilibrated. They spent countless hours studying anatomy and physiology in high school; now they are expected to take a class called The History of Pirates?

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Cartoon by Mataya Armstrong of the North Dakota State University Spectrum

Don’t get me wrong; there are definitely students out there who would happily embark on a new educational endeavor for the sake of learning. But there are a lot of students who need convincing that Quest is worth their time and effort. This is where the peer mentor comes in. It is imperative that students have someone relatable who can provide a testament to the value of a liberal education. The peer mentor needs to be a person who understands why students might be resistant to broadening their learning experiences beyond their major but can also show students how those experiences will enrich their lives. Fortunately, students become peer mentors because they are genuinely interested in making the first-year experience the best it can be for other students, so Quest professors already have an advocate by their side.

 

Before the semester starts, the professor and peer mentor need to meet and discuss the aims of the class. At this initial meeting, both the instructor and student should articulate goals or ideas for coordinating activities or increasing student engagement. I would also recommend that the professor share a copy of the syllabus with the mentor. While staying on top of the course material is not part of the peer mentor’s role, some mentors may choose to complete readings and take part in discussions as a way to connect with students. Meetings between the professor and peer mentor need to continue throughout the semester to evaluate the progress of these goals and ideas and to formulate new ones. A peer mentor might be hesitant to make suggestions, assuming that the professor already has things figured out the best way possible. It is helpful for the professor to encourage the peer mentor to incorporate his or her own ideas throughout the semester and to share ownership in the course.

The peer mentor needs to regularly demonstrate involvement with his or her class. Whether this takes the shape of weekly group workout sessions at the SRWC, a creative presentation during the class period, or group movie nights, the peer mentor needs to consistently show the class that he or she is invested in them. Students are pleasantly surprised when the professor shows up at a few group gatherings outside of class. They appreciate seeing a different side of the instructor. It makes him or her seem more relatable and accessible, which are both important qualities for any educator to have. Getting to know students on a more personal level can also help the peer mentor and professor become more aware of any issues students are struggling with, and the instructor or mentor can direct students to the appropriate resources if necessary.

These relationships among the professor, peer mentor, and students are crucial to students’ success with Quest courses. Students are far more likely to be engaged with the class material (even if it isn’t something they would typically be interested in) if they can find a way to connect with the professor and peer mentor. These connections can help students realize that what they are learning through inquiry, exploration, and outreach has significance to their lives and to their chosen career path. These connections can help students feel like they matter to the campus community. These connections can help students give their Quest course the fair chance it undoubtedly deserves.

Photo by the author during one of her tours as a Peer Mentor

— Sarah Kofler, English & Secondary Ed ’15, English Teacher at Marathon High School

Tours & Scavenger Hunts in Quest I

I took this picture on a student’s smartphone during class.  I use it here to illustrate my point in today’s post: it is a good thing to get Quest I students out of the classroom during class.

Getting out of the classroom can be a nice tool in your first-year-experience toolbox.  I am familiar with three ways of doing this at UW Oshkosh: the downtown tour, the campus tour, and the scavenger hunt.  I will share those here, and I hope others can chime with their ways of getting students out of the classroom in the comments section.

The students posing, above, were in my Fall 2014 Quest I.  We had just been discussing the Independent Order of Odd Fellows’ Hall in which Manila Restaurant is housed.  On our long walk on the Wiouwash Trail to get there, we talked about Oshkosh history and the signature question of “How do people understand and engage in community life?”.  The walking tour took a little research (start here and here), but there are a surprising number of historical markers along the way.  It lent itself to our getting to know one another, to talking about what makes a community, and to my mostly non-Oshkosh students getting to know their new adopted city.

On a different day, we made a much shorter tour around campus.  We started from our classroom in Sage, heading to Shapiro Park, near the Fox River, then Pollock House, Reeve Union, Dempsey Hall, and Swart Hall.  Handily, the Polk Library office has compiled several histories of buildings, events, or groups at U.W. Oshkosh.  Dempsey Hall was a place to talk about the 1916 fire, Black Thursday, and the Algoma Street Riots, while Swart Hall was a place to talk about U.W. Oshkosh’s long tradition of teacher training, part of which is depicted in the New Deal art in the main lobby.  I found students eager to know their place in the history of the university, and happy to see more student resources in person.  I usually task my peer mentor with leading us through Reeve, pointing out where to do this or that.  (At Pollock House, the USP staff are always welcoming to USP students).

All Quest I courses require some co-curricular activities.  The way that I, and many of my History Department colleagues, have incorporated these is to frame them as a scavenger hunt.  For my class, I ask students to “collect” a couple co-curricular activities in each of these categories: cultural events, events that help you get to know UWO, events that help you get to know Oshkosh, student organization events, and office visits with me and our peer mentor.  Each “collected” event gets the student one point in her final average.  No double-dipping is allowed, but attending the annual Pow Wow could count as a cultural event or getting to know UWO. My peer mentor, of course, picks a couple that she will be at, and advertises these in class.  I also like to attend a couple, usually a Taste of Nations lunch and an on-campus film showing.  Students prove to me that they attended by showing some artifact or souvenir: a ticket stub, a selfie, or a short reflection on the event.  Jeff Pickron, I hear, frames his differently.  He gives students one day to whirl around campus “collecting” lots of things.  That is a nice way of helping students get to know one another and the campus.

What about you?  How do you get Quest I students out of the classroom and attending co-curricular events?

– Gabe Loiacono, History