Sarah Koscielniak, Concordia University – St Paul, ‘12

The experience is very interdisciplinary and the topics not only bleed into other classes but also into the students’ personal lives.  I would learn something in the classroom, then walk out of the classroom and see a way to apply what I just learned! The experience of living with students from other schools in a house integrated in the community was extremely important to the whole learning experience. I became a part of the community I was working with. 

I learned some of the challenges that many non-profits face in the city and some different tactics to handle those challenges.  I learned about patience and perseverance.  I met some amazing individuals during that time, and they will forever stay in my heart. 

I took U4C my Junior year of college.  As a Senior this year, I can already see how it has impacted the way I view education, the world, and my future.  I am more attentive in class to make connections of what I am learning about a certain topic, and how that can be applied to my own work in the community both now and in the future.  It helped me be prepared for the good and the bad of the non-profit industry.  I feel very skilled and prepared for whatever the future holds in a growing cross-cultural world!

Nou Thao, Crown College, ‘11

The experience was very good and I recommend it for all students who have a heart for the urban cities of the world.  I loved living in community and the small classroom sizes.  It was challenging, stretched me a lot, and I really learned more about myself and others. At my internship, I learned that everything takes soooooo much longer in the “real world” to come through.  I learned patience, and being faithful to something even when it’s hard and not what I expected.  

Dakin Schultz, Northwestern College, ‘13

Whether it is in a class, on my front porch or walking to the local bakery a few blocks away, I have had a fair amount of new experiences in my first semester as a U4C student. Meeting new people, going to new places and learning about the city from people who have lived and worked here has been an amazing and a very special opportunity for me.

I have learned a variety of things at my internship at Hope Academy so far this semester. It has been a great chance that I have had this year and the staff and faculty at the school have been terrific. My supervisor has helped me to connect better with inner-city students and how to help those students connect with Jesus through various activities and trips.

This very original and one-of-a-kind program has given me a different outlook on education and how you can constantly be learning through experience, not just lecture. Through the U4C program I have learned to connect with people who are different from myself and to be able to make connections and build relationships in order to share the Gospel and the love of Christ.

To learn more, visit the U4C website. This piece was put together with extensive support from Patricia Fenwick, Kari Raia, and Roland Wells.

Teenagers’ interest in pursuing engineering, for instance, increases dramatically when they hear about the ways it might benefit them and the world.  A recent survey by Intel and Change the Equation found:

• 63 percent of teens have never considered a career in engineering.
• 61 percent of teens are more likely to consider engineering after learning that engineering majors make an average annual income of $75,000; more than 50 percent are persuaded by the fact that the unemployment rate among engineers is more than 4 percentage points lower than the national rate.
• The societal benefits of what engineers do, like preventing disasters or generating cleaner electricity, are particularly resonant with teens that have never considered engineering before.  Learning about engineering feats such as saving the Chilean miners who were trapped for 69 days motivates 52 percent to think twice about the career.

“The students who are not interested in engineering are most likely to use the word ‘difficult’ to describe engineering,” commented Chronicle of Higher Education blogger Robert Talbert, but “students are willing to take on difficult tasks as long as they know there will be some payoff—for themselves or for the world, or both—at the end of it.”  (And really, are those of us done with school any different?)

With big goals, we’re better off breaking them down and recognizing shorter-term accomplishments and payoffs.  Students studying to be engineers—or anything else—can address public problems long before they’re full-time professionals, and doing so will help the classroom content seem relevant and the students feel successful.  Among the strategies for motivating students to learn, recommended by the authors of How Learning Works:  7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching:  assigning students “authentic, real-world tasks,” including service-learning projects.

Most people in this network don’t need to be reminded of the power of engaged learning, glad as we might be to see it noted in this kind of book.  Yet we can always use more examples of effective practice, more clarity on our common goals, more evidence of positive change.

- Julie Plaut

Diane Tran, Project Manager at Grassroots Solutions, College of St. Scholastica alumna

1)     What about your college experience influenced where you are today?
In my current community and professional work, I work to advance policy and social change through advocacy and education. It was during my time at The College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, MN that I was able to practice and develop insight into a great deal of the skills I now employ daily – understanding systems, building coalitions, and utilizing collaborative leadership skills. The Benedictine values of community, hospitality, respect, stewardship, and love of learning provided practical grounding for me as I pursued my academic studies and, I believe, were the most important part of the education I received as part of my undergraduate studies.

2)      What is the most exciting thing that you do in your job?
I’m a project manager with Grassroots Solutions, a Minneapolis-based consulting firm specializing in grassroots strategy, training, organizing, and evaluation. We work with a variety of national, statewide, and local clients including nonprofits, government and associations, corporations, and candidates. My team works on both electoral and advocacy projects and I’ve been fortunate to engage on issues like promoting the clean energy economy, protecting antibiotic efficacy for human health through changing industrial farming practices, and preserving medical care for the poorest of the poor in Minnesota. I’m lucky to work with great people on behalf of important causes.

3)      What book should everybody read, and why?
The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, by William Strauss and Neil Howe, was published in 1997, and details the researchers’ theory of American history as a series of recurring cycles. As a student of history, it is fascinating to consider their proposed understanding of people and cultural shifts as part of larger archetypes and natural systems. As a citizen concerned by the partisan divide and political gridlock that seems today’s norm, it is comforting to take the long view that the current political and economic challenges we face are neither unprecedented nor new to the human condition. As they purport, “In nature, the season that is about to come is always the season farthest removed from memory. So too in American history, past and present.”

4)      Who or what is inspiring your work these days?
Minnesota has a nationally recognized civic tradition and I’m proud to be a part of contributing to that trend. We Minnesotans vote and volunteer in record numbers and we are concerned about the well-being of our communities. I have served in recent years on the boards of directors for the Citizens League, Kids ‘n Kinship, National Association of Asian American Professionals (NAAAP-MN), the Minnesota Public Health Association, and the Minnesota Women’s Consortium. I volunteer with youth and direct service programs at my church, teach courses on active citizenship for emerging leaders, and am pleased to be a part of the civic infrastructure of our great state.

5)      What are you passionate about?
I’m the founding blogger for Minnesota Rising and am engaged in work to build relationships, trust, and a shared vision for the rising Millennial generation in Minnesota. Having been a youth, student, and community organizer, I recognize that young people do not have to wait for some appointed time upon which we can assume the mantle of leadership. If our generation is able to come together now because of our common experiences and a shared admiration for and commitment to Minnesota, we have that much more opportunity to continue our state’s historic legacy of educational attainment, economic vitality, and healthy communities. I invite any and all young Minnesotans interested in joining the discussion to contribute to the “Our Minnesota: Building A State of Trust,” cascading conversations tour and to work with us to develop the collective capacity of this generation for impacting Minnesota’s future.

We’re starting a new type of blog post, asking alumni of Minnesota Campus Compact member institutions about their civic experiences and reflections.  If you have people you’d like to hear from or questions you’d like to ask, please let us know — or ask someone questions yourself and send us the results to share.  Thanks!

Tiffany Vang

Through the College of Saint Benedict Jackson Fellowship I have been able to secure an intern position at TakeAction MN with the Hmong Organizing program. This summer has been an amazing experience. I have been privileged to work with so many  people from all kinds of organizations with a progressive agenda. I am currently working with the  Veterans Committee in partnership with the Special Guerrilla Unit Veterans and Families of U.S.A., INC. on getting Hmong veterans who fought in the Vietnam War era to benefits.

Being awarded the Jackson Fellowship has set a standard for me to be a leader with integrity and morals, and a positive agent of change. By being a Jackson Fellow, I see that people immediately expect something great out of me, and with those high expectations, I’ve started to see myself in that way.   Through the various leadership workshops and inspiring speakers we are able to meet, my definition and perception of leadership and followership has changed, and has empowered me to become a better and well-rounded leader. During this summer, the Jackson Fellowship has put a different lens in front of me where I see that I matter and can make great changes.

This fellowship has exposed me to many things that have changed the way I viewed my future career. I’ve become more focused and realistic about what I can do and have time for in my life rather than spreading myself too much on everything I care about. One of the most important things I learned from the fellowship is that first impressions matter and that you have to present yourself in a way that you want to be viewed. The exposure to the workshops and professional tips has helped me a lot during my fellowship and will continue to help me throughout my career.

I think grant writing was particularly informing and useful. I learned many things I didn’t know of and I find it to be incredibly important skill and knowledge to have especially if you plan to go into the nonprofit sector.

For anyone interested in creative ways to document results, St. Cloud State University president and Minnesota Campus Compact board vice chair Earl Potter recommends Unobtrusive Measures, a classic book by psychologist Eugene J. Webb and several colleagues. (Originally published in 1966, it is still in print and available from Sage Publications.) While the authors consider surveys and interviews “probably the most flexible and generally useful devices we have for gathering information,” the book emerges from concern that:

The dominant mass of social science research is based upon interviews and questionnaires. We lament this overdependence upon a single, fallible method. Interviews and questionnaires intrude as a foreign element into the social setting they would describe, they create as well as measure attitudes, they elicit atypical roles and responses, they are limited to those who are accessible and will cooperate, and the responses obtained are produced in part by dimensions of individual differences irrelevant to the topic at hand.

But the principal objection is that they are used alone. No research method is without bias. Interviews and questionnaires must be supplemented by methods testing the same social science variables but having different methodological weaknesses.

Most civic and community engagement practitioners are well aware that self-reported data can be dismissed as unreliable evidence of real change. Students may answer questions selectively because they are aware they are being tested and the institution hopes they will respond in certain ways. Fewer students may respond because of survey fatigue, as an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education this fall suggests, and different groups of students may be more or less prone to respond. Surveys of students, community partners, and other stakeholders need not be abandoned, but finding additional ways to document impact could triangulate results and make a stronger case.

So how might we collect meaningful data without directly asking people for it? A few examples from the book may help spark creative ideas:

• tracking how often floor tiles in different parts of a museum need to be replaced is a measure of the exhibits’ relative popularity;
• counting empty bottles in trash cans would indicate how much alcohol is drunk by residents of an officially “dry” town; and
• the dilation of a person’s pupils may indicate fear or interest in something.

Some public records offer information about civic behaviors, such as
registering to vote and actually voting. The number of complaints local police receive about loud parties might be an indication of how responsible and considerate students are as neighbors. Similarly, the number of dormitory residents requesting a new roommate might be a measure of how skilled students are at working through differences. The number and content of letters to the editor or online comments on news sites might reflect how engaged students are with public issues and how effectively they articulate a position. Obituaries can probably tell us a great deal about the behaviors and values of our alumni, though few of us would want to wait that long to assess the results of our efforts—plus obituaries, like other public and private records, are shaped by social expectations and may not be kept consistently over time.

Another technique is simple observation. Perhaps we could be trained to recognize contempt, fear, and other emotions in people’s facial expressions. We might see how often recyclable items are placed in regular trash cans or how many bicycles are parked on campus in order to measure people’s commitment to environmental sustainability. These examples are just the initial results of a little brainstorming. What measures can you imagine being useful in capturing the outcomes of campuses’ civic and community engagement efforts?

One final point to keep in mind as we strive to improve assessment and accountability: Mike Newman of the Travelers Foundation says he looks for evidence of contribution rather than attribution. Many people do not expect us to use experimental methods or to prove a causal effect free of any other factors. Evidence of success matters, but so does trust (and open communications and relationships), whether we want to gain support or achieve our core goals.
– Julie Plaut

Katia Vantries

U of M Morris student, Katia Vantries, won Miss Morris Community Award in part because of her work through Students in Service.  Check out the story here.

Nicholas Kang

Nicholas Kang, a Saint Olaf student and a MN Campus Compact Presidents’ Student Leadership Award Recipient, is working to bring education to rural Nepal.  Check out the story here.

Faculty around the country have conducted research on this kind of team testing, with similarly positive results.  Dr. Robert Dunbar at the University of Minnesota Rochester has begun related research and shares his preliminary findings and both pedagogical and research motivations below:

The group component [in classes in this study] goes beyond testing. Students complete study guides prior to class. Then in class, they complete a quick “confusion and clarifications” survey (think – muddiest point) before they do anything else. Next, they split into their groups to discuss the study guide questions/concepts and then complete the same “confusions and clarifications” survey. The second time, they focus on highlighting concepts that were not clarified by the small group discussion. We then take the results of the second survey to guide the focus of our “lecture”/class discussion. Therefore, the students help to clarify topics in their groups before we do anything. Preliminary results of the surveys suggest that there is a significant gain in understanding just through peer interactions before we lecture. This is not yet published and is still very preliminary.

Pedagogy – Based on feedback from graduate/professional programs as well as industry, it is clear that there is a demand for graduates who can effectively work in groups. However, we also still needed to support and encourage individual, self-accountability. How do we reconcile these apparently opposing goals? Furthermore, can we encourage people to value group work AND self-accountability without generating animosity between high and low performers? The model that I (and the student based faculty who work with me) have implemented includes a high point value for the individual exams (~150 pts) and a lower possible extra credit contribution from the group tests (up to 10 pts). Under this model, performance of the group does seem to be influenced by the high performers but the high performers also value the contributions of all members of the group to make up the gaps in understanding that they (the high performers) have. Furthermore, the lower performers no longer resent the high performers as “curve breakers” because there is no curve. Rather, the extra-credit earned by all effectively replaces any curve so ALL students benefit when the group performs better.

Research – Does working in groups facilitate learning the material? This is a tricky question. The data collected to date argues that the vast majority of the time, the group result is above even the highest performer in the group. In other words, even the highest performers benefit from working in groups. As with all studies of this nature, there are exceptions but these are rare. Furthermore, and this is anecdotal for the moment, students actually discuss and appear to learn while they go over the test as a group. I am currently trying to figure out how gender and social self-efficacy relate to group performance as well as how to capture the level of learning that appears to be happening. Undoubtedly, future analysis will include questions that appear on multiple exams and, someday with appropriate IRB approval, an analysis of student discussions while they work.

While this team-oriented approach to traditional course content seems like a natural fit for classes that form teams to complete community-engaged projects, it is applicable to a wide array of courses.  Harvard physicist Eric Mazur developed a similar peer instruction technique that has received widespread acclaim and adoption in the sciences.  His research and UMR’s unique curriculum are both highlighted in an American Radio Works documentary aired last week, Don’t Lecture Me.  A few additional resources on this topic:

• Team-Based Learning:  A Transformative Use of Small Groups in College Teaching by Larry K. Michaelson, Arletta Bauman Knight, and L. Dee Fink (Praeger, 2002)—the chapter on getting started is available here
• A podcast about group learning at UMR
•  Team-Based Learning Collaborative
• Immediate Feedback Assessment Technique, developed by Michael and Beth Epstein, which can be used in team-based learning or other contexts
•  “Peer Instruction Enhanced Meaningful Learning:  Ability to Solve Novel Problems” by Ronald N. Cortright, Heidi L. Collins, and Stephen E. DiCarlo, in Advances in Physiological Education, 29 (2005)

Even beyond the context of teaching and course development, the research showing that student teams do better than individuals is intriguing.  In The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations (Doubleday, 2004), James Surowiecki argues that groups can make better decisions or predictions than experts, particularly when those groups draw on a diversity of opinions from individuals whose opinions were reached independently, and when decentralization allows the group to draw on local knowledge to determine their collective position.  Given how important collaborative action and decision-making are in a democracy, it’s exciting to speculate that positive experiences with team-based learning could also increase people’s inclination to engage with others to address important public issues.  Anyone interested in a research project?

–Julie Plaut