Graduate Course on Intellectual Entrepreneurship

In addition to being an internationally known researcher on aesthetic education and qualitative research methods, my friend, Prof. Liora Bresler, is working on intellectual entrepreneurship.

She's teaching a graduate course this spring on this new area. Read below for more information:

Spring 2009
C & I 507/590

Academic Intellectual Entrepreneurship: Vision, Team Leading, and Creativity
Tuesdays, 11-1
Liora Bresler, Instructor


The overall goal of the course is to develop an entrepreneurial perspective of the role of faculty in academia. The three components of the academic endeavor--research, teaching, and service--will be conceptualized as highly entrepreneurial activities.

Building on their individual passions and strengths, the course will empower students (prospective faculty) to experience each of these three components of academia along the three entrepreneurial axes: recognize opportunities, acquire resources, and create a new entity of value. Specifically, the course will address the following: 1. Expansion of contents, forms, and audiences in teaching; 2. Choosing research questions for significance and impact, garnering means for effective execution, and creating avenues to bring the fruits of research to society; and 3. Refocusing of academic service as a vehicle for the building and nurturing of intellectual community.

The course will have three major components: 1. Theoretical foundations of the field of entrepreneurship with a slant toward inter-disciplinary environment, creativity, and intellectual entrepreneurship; 2. Case studies of successful entrepreneurs in academia; 3. Individual student capstone projects of developing an “academic entrepreneurial plan”. This course is seen as a part of the education of doctoral students, in preparing them to be resourceful, dynamic faculty, responsive to the needs and opportunities in the field, drawing on their visions, creativity, and skills, to create new endeavors.

* for more information about the course, contact Liora Bresler at liora@uiuc.edu

Inquiry – Consequences and intersecting perspectives

A recent cartoon from Baby Blues (Kirkman & Scott) provides some interesting perspectives on inquiry in action. The first panel has young Zoe helping her younger brother, Hammie, into the house and saying that Hammie had stepped on a thistle barefoot in a vacant lot; Hammie of course is very vocally expressing the pain caused by the experience. The second panel shows mom saying that the vacant lot is full of thistles and asking him where were his shoes. Hammie replies that he had taken them off. The third panel shows mom asking him why he had taken them off, to which Hammie’s reply is “To see if it hurts to step on a thistle.” The fourth panel has mom releasing a deep sigh with her head hung down, while Hammie observes that she is acting like it was all his fault.

Hammie employed the inquiry process to perfection, first asking a question about whether a thistle hurts when stepped on barefoot. Whether or not someone had previously told him it would hurt was not relevant to his drive for self-discovery. His investigation into the question, that is, stepping on the thistle, created for him a very personalized answer to the question. He showed the initiative to undertake that inquiry on his own. His discussion with mom brought her into an intersection with his inquiry process, resulting in two divergent paths of reflection. For mom, it probably was wondering what sort of kid would be so dumb as to purposefully subject themselves to pain. Hammie, on the other hand was perfectly happy with the result of his inquiry. The pain is temporary, the knowledge lasts forever. He no longer would have to take someone else’s word about the thistle hurting. He had personalized the learning from his inquiry. His subsequent reflection, expressed in the last panel, related more to his response to his mom’s interpretation of the success or failure of his inquiry, and worrying about why he might be to blame for her misinterpretation of his learning.

How often in higher education do we allow our students to take the level of risk where they might meet with negative consequences? Not often. We are, appropriately, concerned for their physical and mental safety. As teachers we need to try to be more aware of how the student interprets their successes and failures, and help them reflect on their outcomes rather than encouraging them to worry about whether their learning from inquiry matches with our perceived expectations as teachers. Did Hammie’s mom miss a teachable moment? It is not easy for us to fully appreciate someone else’s inquiry when we only intersect with their inquiry cycle at one brief point, in this case after a moment of discussion. We need to listen carefully and the inquirer needs to communicate their experience effectively. This is another reason why shaping the student’s habits of mind and building the student’s cognitive skills allows them to better communicate about their inquiry. But it also points to the value of shared inquiry, working in teams, collaborative learning, etc, where the collective experiencing of a focused inquiry provides additional richness of the learning outcomes.

For another example of this intersection of someone with one of Hammie’s inquiry processes, see Thursday, July 10 2008 at www.babyblues.com (see Archive).

Habits of Mind

One of the great things about maintaining the scholarly learning community as part of the Undergrads Engaging in Inquiry program this past year has been the opportunity to discuss ideas and thoughts with others. On a campus like Illinois, we typically have limited opportunities to discuss teaching and learning with our colleagues. The UEI discussions this past year provided a regular venue for those interactions. We hope to continue providing those opportunities for discussions this coming year, primarily through the program that Ann Abbott is developing.

Sometimes someone will say something or use a phrase that resonates with me and helps solidify or provide structure to my often poorly structured thoughts and ideas. In some of the discussions about inquiry and how we use it regularly in learning, Cheelan Bo-Linn used a phrase that caught my attention. She referred to inquiry as a “habit of mind.” I have come to view the inquiry process as the mechanism by which we gain new knowledge. As such, the inquiry process is a mental habit. It is a normal, natural approach that our brain uses to acquire new knowledge or understanding. We are always reaching for new knowledge based on our existing knowledge, linking the new with what is already known. We ask our most productive questions based on existing knowledge. We intuitively seek out information resources as part of our investigation. We create conclusions, or new ways of thinking about something, or reinforce our existing views. We discuss our new creation of ideas or understanding, at least with ourselves, and often with others, whether through dialogue (with friends and colleagues) or examinations (in a class), always seeking feedback on how our created understanding fits with how others perceive things. And of course, we reflect, consider, cogitate, and let it roll around among the grey cells. For better or worse, that inquiry cycle results in something new built on the foundation of our pre-existing knowledge. These are nature, intuitive habits of mind.

If these habits of mind are natural, then do we need to teach them to our students? Another phrase that Cheelan has used suggests that the components of the inquiry cycle reflect a “repertoire of cognitive skills.” In undergraduate education, we tend to emphasize the skills of investigation and perhaps some minimal level of creativity. The other components of the inquiry process are underrepresented in our typical teaching efforts. We rarely challenge students to ask questions based on their lived experiences. We don’t ask them to be creative too often, either. Usually we ask them to reiterate the creations of someone else, whether it be the expert in the content, the author of the text book, or ourselves as transmitters of that content. Getting students to have productive discussions, informed but independent thoughts, and meaningful reflections takes time, as well as well constructed and thoroughly planned activities, requiring a very different approach to teaching than that in which many are experienced. Furthermore, if we were to let our students reflect upon their knowledge and learning – well goodness, they might actually start thinking outside the narrowly defined box that we call course content.

What if we were able to more fully represent the inquiry process throughout a student’s undergraduate program? Any given class or instructor would not necessarily have to integrate all components of the inquiry process in every course. Giving focus to different steps in the inquiry process, or different cognitive skills, in various courses cumulatively gives the student experience with each of the skills. Then exposing students to organized activities that embrace the complete inquiry process through one or more cycles may be achieved through what are referred to as capstone experiences or courses, internships, international learning experiences, and other experiences that promote learning outside of the traditional classroom. Students currently take advantage of those types of experiences, but do they gain full learning value from their efforts when they enter the experiences with an under-developed repertoire of cognitive skills? Do they know how to take full advantage of those habits of mind that they use so often in their everyday lives?

Integrated Learning and Peru

Judy Sunderman recently has been talking to me about what she is calling “integrated learning.” A couple of her thoughts on this subject include: “Robert Kegan (1994) noted that most of us are in “over our heads” when it comes to modern problems. The way we have been taught to analyze and understand issues doesn’t prepare us for the disarray of complexities that characterize contemporary life. Our understanding is based on linear patterns within discipline-defined subjects which often elude innovative, nontraditional, and multilayered thinking.” And, “There are spotty and often isolated attempts by institutions to experiment with vehicles for learning that better support integrative thinkers and doers. These academic programs and experiences are aimed at providing students with sustained opportunities to explore a wide range of knowledge and make connections among seemingly disparate topics.”

I recently returned from a trip to Peru. We visited Lima, Cusco, Machu Picchu, Puno and Lake Titikaka. Of course, Machu Picchu was the ultimate experience (I had to include a least one picture below). All-in-all the trip was very challenging in a number of ways, but in the end it was a trip of a lifetime.

Did I experience integrated learning during that trip? Lets consider the topic of altitude. Our trip experiences ranged from near sea-level (Lima) to over 13,000 feet (Lake Titikaka). Living in the flat-lands of central Illinois, not being in the best of shape, having some limited experiences skiing at higher elevations, and yes, getting older, all combined to make the issue of potential altitude sickness something of concern prior to the trip. Based on prior experience, I had only felt minor effects of skiing at higher altitudes, such as slight headaches, etc., so I did not expect to react too strongly. All the supporting information that I came across indicated that staying hydrated and taking it very easy initially would help. So, we created an approach to deal with the altitude that was consistent with those suggestions. And then landed in the Andes mountains to test our theories. Of course the best plans don’t always work. Travel fatigue and uncertain or modified schedules, along with the driving desire to make the most out of the opportunities of visiting these remarkable places (headache or not), combined to challenge our plans for thinking about how the altitude might affect us.

Here’s where the integration comes in. We continued learning as we experienced the altitude. We changed our behavior, slowing the speed of walking around and taking extra efforts to stay hydrated. We did undergo some limited metabolic adaptation in the short time we were in Peru. Each experience was associated with a different and new place that we had not previously visited, each one offering its own challenges. And most importantly, we survived the challenges, further cementing the relationship between what we thought we understood about altitude and how to avoid altitude sickness, the experiences encountered at the various altitudes, and the association of those experiences with other insights gained about the specific places we visited, such as its quite hot up on Machu Picchu in July in spite of it being their winter. We came away with an integrated knowledge where the theoretical was tempered through overcoming of personal challenges and was linked to meaningful individual experiences associated with unique environments. Theory integrated with individual experiences gained in special environments.

The challenge we face in the classroom is how to bring in opportunities that promote those individual experiences and those special environments to be integrated with the content that we feel is critical for our students. Given enough $$, can we take them all to visit a place like this?



No, but we should be able to do more in class than just lecture and show pretty pictures. Again, one of the goals that Ann Abbott has for her program this fall is to think about ways that we can integrate community perspectives, needs and goals into the classroom without having to send students physically out into the community. These in-class approaches should then complement the array of experiential learning opportunities that students may have for learning in an out-of-classroom environment. We should be able to, as Judy says, provide "students with sustained opportunities to explore a wide range of knowledge and make connections among seemingly disparate topics."

Still inquiring on inquiry

It has been awhile since myself or anyone else has contributed to this blog. The end-of-semester crunch is always followed by a period of tying up loose ends left over from the academic year, as well as traveling and catching up on domestic work at home (mowing the lawn, planning plants, etc). Now summer is more than half over and its time to start looking forward to the coming academic year. A number of activities are in the planning stages for the fall. A couple are described here.

Our core group from the Undergrads Engaging in Inquiry program last fall and spring is working closely with one of the new Distinguished Teacher Scholars for 2008-2009. Ann Abbott is an Assistant Professor in Spanish, Italian, & Portuguese. Ann is developing a series of summits and meetings that will offer unique opportunities for Illinois faculty and staff to meet with local community leaders. We look forward to getting a better understanding of how we might further prepare our students for their careers, as well as learning how we might strengthen interactions with the local community. Of course discussions of the inquiry process and how it may be integrated into student learning will be a consistent theme throughout that series of summits and meetings interactions, whether it be integrating inquiry into courses as a means of helping students learn about and understand community, or as the process by which we form collaborations with the community to achieve goals of mutual interest. More on Ann’s plans later.

Judy Sunderman, Andrea Bohn and I will be conducting the Animal Sciences Study Abroad Colloquium again this fall. This course is aimed at ACES students who have recently participated in some sort of international learning experience. The course is designed to encourage students to reflect on their international experiences, share their experiences with their classmates, and enhance their understanding of the full impact that their international experience has had on their personal and professional development. These students will then be provided several opportunities to use their special knowledge to influence how other students think about gaining international experiences, as well as how instructors think about integrating international perspectives into their courses. A tall order, indeed. Helping students understand how they have used the inquiry process to gain their experiences, and can use it to gain further value from their experiences, will be an ongoing theme during the semester. Although this course has mostly been animal science majors these past couple of years, we hope to make it a college-wide course in 2009.

Oops!

Dear Walt, Prasanta, Judy and others,

Sorry about my previous post--I logged into blogger with the wrong log-in and ended up posting on this blog instead of my own (www.spanishandillinois.uiuc.edu). Sorry about that!

Ann

Can Interlangua.com Help Spansh Community Service Learning Students?

Liz Girten did such a good job trying out and reviewing http://www.spanishpod.com/ that now I'm asking her to do the same with http://www.interlangua.com/. If another student is interested in doing the same, just let me know.

My SPAN 332 "Spanish & Entrepreneurship" students analyzed InterLangua on their midterm exam. The first question: Is Interlangua an example of social entrepreneurship as defined in Greg Dees' book "Enterprising Nonprofits." Last question: should Spanish & Illinois require students to use Interlangua. Students thought it was a great company with a lot of value, but when asked to vote with their wallets, the majority said no. Well, now Liz can try it and tell us what kind of value it would truly bring to our Spanish community service learning courses.

Depending on what Liz finds, I'd like to explore a "customized" service with Interlangua. They work with students and business people on medical Spanish, business Spanish, etc. Since Spanish community service learning students have specific needs, I think we could design some lessons specifically for them. The people at Interlangua are very enthusiastic and helpful, so we'll see.

Here are the questions that I would like Liz to answer in her review. If anyone else wants to use Interlangua (or already has) and wants to post a review here, that would be great!

1. Many students who do Spanish community-based learning have to talk on the phone and report having great difficulties with that. Would Interlangua help students develop telephone skills in Spanish?

2. Students report that Spanish community-based learning helps them develop "real-world" Spanish, not text-book Spanish. Many of the Latinos that they encounter in Champaign-Urbana come from Mexico and Guatemala. Would Interlangua help students become comfortable with a useful regional dialect?

3. Would the technology set-up be a problem for students?

4. Anything else you'd like to say would be welcome!

Liz is busy with final exams right now, so whenever she has a chance to actually use the services at www.interlangua.com, I'll post them here.

Ann

Thanks for the Thoughtful Response

I just wanted to thank Walt and Lanny (see Comments at the end of my Post)for the well written and very thoughtful responses to my post. Walt and Lanny both raise very valid and important points about my comments; and more importantly they raise important points about the Inquiry Process.

Perhaps I am naive because I expected to increase my knowledge about inquiry as I surveyed the available research, but all I earned for the effort was more questions.
These two (Lanny and Walt as well as others in UEI) constantly push me to reflect more deeply and think on new levels about teaching and learning. It is exactly this kind of meaningful dialogue that keeps all of us coming back to the Faculty Learning Community: Undergraduates Engaging in Inquiry.

The scoop on Inquiry Learning - Thanks, Judy

I have had several people ask me over the past few months about the research data that demonstrates that inquiry-based learning is in fact effective. On a personal level this seems a ridiculous question. Much of anything that we learn, either individually or collaboratively, occurs because we are employing an inquiry process, although this often may be occurring automatically. That is my way of viewing inquiry. So the prospect that inquiry-based learning could be anything but effective does not enter into my thinking at all.

Nevertheless, it is appropriate to see where we are in terms of "sound data" supporting the value of inquiry learning. After hearing Peter Doolittle test the bogus-icity of several commonly held pedagogical principles, I challenged Judy with the task of seeing what research was available. I want to thank her for an excellent overview in the previous blog entry and in last week’s discussion of the inquiry learning community. Here are a few of my thoughts relative to her observations.

First, the point is made about developing an accepted definition of inquiry on campus. A precise definition of inquiry would lead to exclusivity, rigidity, and narrowness of how we think about inquiry, not to mention discussions of semantics. I am less concerned that we define inquiry than that we lend ourselves readily to engaging in the process and encourage our students to routinely engage.

Second, Judy makes an excellent point about gauging effectiveness of employing the inquiry process based on typical learning endpoints such as content mastery, or even longer-range impacts such as critical thinking abilities, etc. My approach at the moment is based on the notion that engaging my students in the inquiry process with respect to course content results in their personalizing their learning about content and models the process for them to address challenges to their future thinking. I have come to think about the desired outcome of learning by my students not in the context of how much they remember, or even how many bits of information they may “know,” but rather can they engage in an intelligent and insightful conversation with someone who is an expert in the field. Can the student, even in the position of being a novice in a field (which most still are when they graduate), challenge an expert to reexamine the expert's own knowledge or reconsider their own perspectives of their expertise? That is a very different relationship than the typical authoritarian one between teacher and student. It is the difference between "I am teacher, therefore I know more than you the student," vs "Let's share our knowledge, understanding, and perspectives, as well as our ignorance, and all learn from that collaboration."

A third point that Judy makes is relative to the research that has been done on inquiry learning, specifically that “… a good deal of the research on Inquiry Learning is qualitative. In many cases those studies raise more questions than they provide answers.” Hmmm, that sounds familiar. It sounds exactly like the outcome of engaging in the cyclic nature of the inquiry process. The question is, why don’t we have better answers to those second and third generation questions?

Finally, Judy observes that “Successful use of the Inquiry Learning Process requires the instructor to use judgment, be reflective and responsive, balance classroom components effectively, and many other things that constitute being a good teacher. Oddly enough it seems to require the same things of students.” From my perspective, it is the very responses of my students to the challenges of engaging in the inquiry process, both the successes and failures, which have enhanced my own reflection about teaching and learning and affected everything that I try to do in any interaction with students. Again, I get back to the notion that my active role in engaging my students in inquiry results in me being a part of their inquiry process, and therefore collectively, collaboratively, we are all enjoying the fruits of learning through inquiry, even if we are learning different things.

Again, thanks to Judy for summarizing some of the literature in this area.

Is inquiry learning a trendy apparition or the real thing?

There are many reasons to believe that Inquiry Learning is a useful and beneficial tool that positively impacts student learning. Much anecdotal information supports that premise. Reputable and widely accepted theories of student development form its foundation. Positive short-term effects are observable in the classroom. Intuitively, the Inquiry Process just makes sense.

Nevertheless, it seems reasonable--even wise-- to take a critical look at learning through inquiry. Has the impact of the Inquiry Process on student learning been documented or is it just an urban myth? In search of an answer, I turned to the available research. Fortunately, there are a number of studies that look at various effects, which should make finding an answer relatively simple. But, it turns out that documenting the effectiveness of Inquiry Learning is anything but simple.

Searching through the literature, the first thing I noticed was that people call the process by different names. Sometimes it is difficult to tell if a study is really about inquiry learning (as I understand it) or about something else. Determining whether the Inquiry Process positively impacts student learning, first depends upon our definition of it. Virginia Lee (2004) notes in her book that institutions would be wise to generate a definition of inquiry learning that is widely understood and accepted across campus. According to Lee a good working definition of inquiry learning creates a language that fosters productive discussions among disciplines.

The second thing I noticed was that no matter how you define or what you call the process, it is difficult to gage effectiveness. Are we looking for outcomes? Inquiry learning is a continuous unending process. Are we looking for content mastery? Then we better all agree on proficiency standards. Are we looking for real long-term understanding, sensitivity to the complexity of life, the ability to think critically, and so on? We can all meet again in 25 years to test that issue.

Thirdly, I noticed that a good deal of the research on Inquiry Learning is qualitative. In many cases those studies raise more questions than they provide answers. Are the findings generalizable or unique? It seems that to some degree using and evaluating Inquiry Learning is a value laden activity. Successful use of the Inquiry Learning Process requires the instructor to use judgment, be reflective and responsive, balance classroom components effectively, and many other things that constitute being a good teacher. Oddly enough it seems to require the same things of students.

All that said here is a quick and simplified survey of research findings:

· Problem-based or inquiry-based learning was developed as a tool to teach medical students (Barrows & Tamblyn, 1980). Two meta-evaluations (Albanses & Mitchell, 1993; Vernon & Blake, 1993) investigated the effectiveness of this learning technique in the medical school environment. Findings indicated that students showed better clinical problem-solving skills and were motivated by the process.
· College students believed that they developed better problem solving skills; were more active and interested (Lieux, 1996).
· Students had more positive perceptions of the learning environment, more confidence problem-solving, and were more positive about life-long learning (Woods, 1996).
· Students reported frustration, uncertainty, and discomfort with the ambiguous and open ended nature of the process (Edens, 2000).
· The inclusive character of inquiry learning benefited students at both ends of the spectrum: learning disabled (Ferretti, Macarthur, & Ojolo, 2001) and talented (Naisbett, 1997).
· One of the first tangible changes in teaching practice was in the way the instructor asked questions in the classroom (Baumfield, 2006). Instructors reported having a better understanding of students’ thinking. Better feedback on teaching. Both student and teacher self-esteem were promoted (Wilks & Emery, 1997; Zohar, 1999).
· Instructors reported a better sense of professional autonomy and stronger motivation to teach (Baumfield, Higgins, & Lin, 2002).
· Positive effects on students when learning was carefully guided (Chall, 2000; Singley & Anderson, 1989).
· Better outcomes were noted when the instructor used guidance combined with some direct instruction (Klahr and Nigam (2004).

Faculty Teaching Retreat

We had a great time at the recent Annual Faculty Teaching Retreat. Peter Doolittle was excellent. One of the underlying themes that he repeatedly addressed was the need for students to be put into situations where they can not only receive information, concepts, etc, but also for them to be able to process what they are learning, observing, experiencing. As we have come to understand the inquiry cycle better, it seems that explicitly using that as a strategy for student activity and learning allows for that processing to occur, especially through the discussion and reflection components of the cycle.

In addition, Prasanta and I were extremely pleased with the turn out at our concurrent session. We gave an overview of the inquiry cycle and summarized some of the things that we feel we learned from the our learning community discussions of the fall semester. We thank all who attended that session. That gave us confidence that we are providing a learning community in which many find value.

One activity that we used was called the Seven-Fingered Hand exercise. This was an extremely successful activity in engaging the audience. We only scratched the surface of discovering what we can do with that type of activity. If you are interested in what that exercise is, see the Creative Think website.

We will be discussing these and other concepts more during the Spring semester. Come and join us.

Thursdays at 3:15-4:45, 428 Armory.

We also have started a wiki that contains some of the materials and discussion summaries from last semester of the Undergraduates Engaging in Inquiry community. This wiki, called Learning Through Reflection, Inquiry and Innovation, is a compilation of work by Walt Hurley and Judy Sunderman. More to come on that website.

Spring Semester Poster

Undergraduates Engaging in Inquiry

Welcome Back

We are starting a new semester of the Undergraduates Engaging in Inquiry learning community. Look for our poster and concurrent session presentation at the 2008 Annual Faculty Retreat: Using the Science of Instruction to Foster Learning, held on January 31.

Learning Community Weekly Discussions

When: Every Thursday, from February 7 through April 10

What time: Gather at 3:00 pm for refreshments, discussions 3:15 – 4:45 pm.

Where: 428 Armory

Weekly programs will include:

• Nuts-n-Bolts of integrating inquiry into your courses
• Learn from the Expert about how to make your strategies actually work
• Critical Friends from our learning community who can provide feedback on proposals and innovative ideas

Undergraduates Engaging in Inquiry is a learning community that explores the role of inquiry in student learning and development. This community of scholars, facilitated by Walt Hurley and Prasanta Kalita (2007-2008 Distinguished Teacher Scholars), is open to all who are interested in helping their students become better learners, becoming more scholarly teachers, taking an active role in a community of like-minded learners, and sharing scholarly work with colleagues.

Drop by for conversation, sharing of ideas and experiences, scholarly discussion of inquiry and learning, and of course, refreshments.

Hope to see you there.