Blogs as a Voice for International Students

  By RCB | July 15, 2009 - 1:21 pm | ,
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I recently discovered an unexpected benefit to having my students blog about their learning experience in my Leadership and Communication Class this summer.  As part of this class, students work in teams over the entire term on a significant course project.  The objective of the project is to provide experiential opportunities for students to develop leadership, team and communication skills.

For years, I have struggled to adequately integrate students whose first language is not English.  For a variety of language and cultural reasons, many of those students struggle with the team project.  As much as I talk with teams about ways to make sure all voices are heard and considered, the western style of collaboration (fast, furious and chaotic at times) can overwhelm a student struggling to understand the nuances of a problem or conversation.  As a result, those students often get relegated to more passive roles in the project, or even get marginalized.

I don’t know that I have found the answer, but I am discovering that the students’ personal blogs for the course have given many of them a voice they have not had in the past.  I have noticed that international students have been writing in their blogs about their experiences in their teams in ways that, in the past, would have been difficult for them to present in a face-to-face meeting.  I also discovered that when other team members read those blogs, they have a better appreciation for what is going on in the minds of their seemingly quieter teammates.  That understanding is already leading to better overall team functioning and integration of all voices in the project.  Now that I have a sense of how blogs can be a tool for richer cross-cultural communication, I can be more proactive about that goal in the future.

Using UfoliO with Summer BA352 Class

  By RCB | July 7, 2009 - 11:42 am | ,
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In our ongoing pilot of WordPress as a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) platform, I have asked my students in my summer BA 352 – Leadership and Communication class to each set up a blog site.  I wanted to explore a few questions this summer:

  1. How could I get students engaged in ongoing reflection through their blog sites, and not just have them respond to posting “assignments”?
  2. How could I use WPMU tools to create an online learning community?
  3. How could I task students with not only ongoing reflection but also creating a showcase portfolio grounded in the competencies of the course?

To begin, I posted my big picture vision for the students here.  What I wanted to do was give them a framework but then give them free reign to operate within that framework.  So, I have a few required elements (like the Leadership Development Plan) that they are to write about.  Then, I have the course competencies:

  1. Understanding and managing self – What are your Emotional Intelligence strengths and weaknesses?  How frequently do you engage in self-reflection?  How often do you ask others for feedback?  How well do you accept feedback and use it to make changes? (Tag = manage self)
  2. Understanding and working with others – What are your strengths and weaknesses in working with others?  What do your Emotional Intelligence competencies say about your ability to understand others and manage relationships?  What do others say about your ability to work with them?  How effective are you at getting the best out of others in a team situation? (Tag = collaboration)
  3. Effective Professional Communication (written and oral) – Can you effectively and persuasively present ideas in multiple formats (memos, reports, proposals, presentations, digital media)? (tag = communication)
  4. Demonstrated ethical practices – What are your core values?  How do those values inform your practices?  What would others say about your ethical standards and practices? (tag = ethics)
  5. Understanding of effective leadership models – How well do you understand effective leadership in organizations?  Can you demonstrate understanding of the 5 Practices of Leadership model and Emotional Intelligence? (tag = leadership models)

The instructions are to notice their experiences as they navigate the course, especially during the experiential learning project they are doing in teams, and write about those experiences in their blogs.  By the end of the course, they should be able to then use pages, rather than posts, to create a showcase portfolio of their mastery of these competencies, with relevant artifacts.  I am working still on the framework for posting the artifacts (i.e. Description of the Artifact, Why they chose that artifact, how it demonstrates their competencies, etc.).

I have asked the students to use some common tags and also any other tags they feel are appropriate for their posts.  The reason for this is the aggregation experiment.  I am pulling all of the student blog posts into one blog here using the Feed WordPress plugin.  It works pretty well but has a few glitches.  What I like is that it automatically creates a Link category called “Contributor” and then assigns each incoming feed to that category.  That way, I can easily use the Link widget in WPMU to list all the blogs in the sidebar.  What does not seem to be working is tags and categories.  It seems that sometimes “tags” on incoming feeds are translated into “categories” even though I have the plugin set to create “tags” on incoming feeds when the category is new.  A minor glitch and probably does not matter in the end as either tags or categories can be aggregated as feeds.

I have been very pleased with students engagement in their postings so far.  I see real reflection going on and since I have not prescribed a specific topic each week, students are free to truly write from their own experience and observations.  The postings also give me a sense of what learnings are hitting the mark and where students are not quite getting it.  With that information, I can tailor subsequent classes to cover misunderstood areas.

A pleasant surprise of student posts is the ownership it seems to create over their own work.  In the past when I handed back a paper, I would often get push back from students on their grade and debate about whether they deserved it or not.  I have already read several posts where students were taking ownership of their work and identifying the reasons why they scored they way they did.  They are making commitments to work on those areas without without me asking them to.

I am not sure in the end how I will evaluate their formative work or their portfolios.  I have some rubrics I am looking at.  I am also not sure how I might aggregate the work for cumulative assessment purposes.  For instance, how could I pull from all these blogs, based on a specific tag/category, student work and get a aggregate view of learning in those specific areas.  Stay tuned for more on that.

Big Ideas = Don Tapscott

  By RCB | July 2, 2009 - 4:01 pm |
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Grown Up Digital – this is a great talk by Don Tapscott, author of Grown Up Digital from Big Ideas on TVO.org.  From their website:

The author of Grown Up Digital, Don Tapscott, refutes the belief that the internet is turning today’s youth into “the dumbest generation”. Tapscott illustrates how the net has changed the way people learn and offers suggestions on how to tap into the expertise that the Net Generation possesses.

Interesting take that might apply to your thinking about UO General Education.

“Hold the Interview”

  By RCB | May 27, 2009 - 8:50 am |
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The authors of the excellent book on persuasion, “Made to Stick“, wrote a piece for Fast Company in which they argue against interviewing as an accurate means of judging talent. They say:

“Imagine if baseball GMs, in recruiting potential players, ignored past batting statistics and instead had a beer with players at Applebee’s to test their culture fit. That’s what we’re doing by betting on interviews.

So, instead, figure out whether candidates can do the job. Research has consistently shown that one of the best predictors of job performance is a work sample. If you’re hiring a graphic designer, get them to design something. If you’re hiring a salesperson, ask them to sell you something. If you’re hiring a chief executive, ask them to say nothing — but reassuringly.”

There is some truth to what they say that argues for helping students understand how to demonstrate what they can do, and how what they can do relates to the job they are applying for.

Web 2.0 Tools for Commenting and Feedback

  By RCB | May 21, 2009 - 1:12 pm |
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I have been trying out various Web 2.0 tools for sharing documents and collecting feedback on those.  Two promising new tools have come to my attention – Embedit.in and Backboard.  Embedit.in allows the user to upload any document and get an “embed” code for placing on a webpage.  Backboard allows the user to upload documents and invite users to provide feedback right on the document or website.  See this link for an example of an uploaded document.  See this link for an example of feedback on a website.   Right now, our WPMU install does not allow embedding of code so Embedit.in won’t work.  We are working on that.  But Backboard has potential for online feedback of student work.

A Step Back

  By RCB | May 6, 2009 - 2:05 pm |
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Thus far in BA 352 SPR09 you have been working diligently on a complex problem in the hopes of persuading others to make changes in their organization.  You have undoubtedly struggled with the ambiguous nature of the project.  You have been through rounds of feedback with each other and me on your work.  The risk now is that we lose sight of the real goal of this project – the development of leadership, team and communication skills.  Your next LDP assignment will ask you to reflect on how these skill areas are affecting your team.  The assumption I make is that the effective use of these skills collectively will result in a better result than ineffectiveness in these areas.

So, as you proceed, stay cognizant of the big picture and what you are learning through this process.  Which of the leadership skills/models we have used so far are making a difference in your team outcomes?  How?  What skills or competencies could make a bigger difference if they were more in play in your team?  How could you make that happen.  As you continue your work, be aware of these questions.

Thursday, April 16 Class

  By RCB | April 14, 2009 - 3:26 pm |
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After the presentations on Resumes Thursday, I would advise your group to have a conversation about your project.  As you move along, your task is to gain clarity and focus on your objectives.

You have all done some individual research, so it will be useful for you to discuss what you know so far.  Next, identify the additional questions created by your research.  I would take a look at the Situation Analysis Assignment Instructions (Course Schedule/Week 4/Class 4A) and use that as a guide to frame your project.  That document outlines the main areas you need to focus on for the next week.  Your situation analysis should inform your understanding of the problem or opportunity.  A clear definition of the problem or opportunity is necessary to move forward.  From there, you will then identify a clear set of objectives for your project (What results do you want to achieve with your project?).  Once your objectives are identified, you will need to better understand the underlying factors that are contributing to the issue.  Understanding those factors will inform the set of solutions that will make the most sense.

For example (this example is completely made up and not supported by research):

Problem: The LCB does not currently have enough students from Mars enrolled. (Notice that this statement has assumptions embedded in it.  It assumes that more Martian students would be better.  Therefore, the problem statement needs to explain why that is the case.) The LCB needs more Martian students enrolled because Martian students are currently underrepresented in the College (Another assumption and more clarification needed.  Need to define what you mean by underrepresented and why that is a problem). Martians currently makeup 15% of the Oregon population, where 60% of UO students come from, and they only comprise 3% of the LCB population.  In addition, American companies are doing business with Martian companies at an increasing rate – Martian companies doing business with American companies has grown 10% every year for the past 5 years.  We need to provide opportunities prepare LCB students for this global economy.

Objective: Through our proposal, we wish to increase the % of Martian students in the LCB from 3% to 10% in the next 5 years.

Factors contributing to the issue:
We have identified 3 factors that contribute to the low rate of Martians coming to the LCB:

  1. Martian students get very good high school preparation in rocket science and space travel, but are less prepared to handle the quantitative pre-business courses such as calculus and accounting
  2. Martian students pay an exorbitant amount in out-of-planet tuition
  3. Martian students are very connected to their community and family, and have a hard time when they are away from home.

You would then need to try and analyze how much each of these factors figure into the problem.  For instance, if you solved 1 and 2, would 3 be less of an issue?  Not until you have at least this level of understanding, can you begin to brainstorm solutions.  As you can see, there might be a number of ways to address these factors but once you identify them, you must address them.  Your set of solutions (most complex problems require multifaceted solutions) must address preparation for pre-business core, tuition and community/family connection, OR you must explain convincingly which ones you will address, which ones you won’t and why.

So, get with your team after the resume presentation and begin sketching out what you know, what you need to know and where you are going next.  Work on the Situation Analysis Assignment that is due 4A.  I will go over Presentation skills in 4A and prep you for Thursday’s presentations.