Ask-Dr-Kirk

Teaching Mistakes

Faculty Focus is a great resource for teachers. Check out their new free ebook, "Teaching Mistakes From the College Classroom." You can download it here but I strongly suggest you go to their website at www.facultyfocus.com and get on their email list as they have lots of good information from a variety of professors.

Download Teaching-mistakes-special-report

Are You Incorporating Social Media Into Your Classroom?

Organizers of the 2010 AEJMC Denver Conference are conducting a competition for those faculty who are incorporating social media in their classes. Winners will be featured panelists at the conference on August 4-7, 2010. Deadline to apply is May 3. As they note:

Social Media is changing the way we live, the way we do business and the way we connect. Nowhere is this more evident than on our college and university campuses. Yet there are unique challenges in incorporating these areas of emerging practices and technologies into an already established and tested curriculum.

To enter, submit a three page summary of how you use social media and answer the following questions:

How do you incorporate social media in the classroom? How do you ensure graduates continue to leave campuses media literate, and able to apply emerging lessons from social media in organizations today and tomorrow?

Each entry should highlight classroom exercises for incorporating social media, and include suggested articles, books, tools, et al.

More information can be found here or contact Mich Sineath at [email protected].

 

 

Teaching Generation "Why?"

Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ, recently wrote an article about managing this new generation of employees that he titled, “Managing Generation “Why?”

As he notes:

Today thousands of managers are sitting at their desks both puzzled and annoyed at the three-letter-word that keeps getting thrown at them by their young workers. Baby Boomer and Traditionalist leaders describe this word as sounding, as one manager told us, “like nails on a chalkboard.” What, you might ask, is this word? And, if you’re a Generation Y-er, you might ask, “Why is it driving you crazy?”

He goes on to say that the word, “why” has different meanings for Gen Y people than it does for baby boomers. Baby boomers were taught to obey, not to question our elders, to do our homework or our job without questioning or complaining. Thus, to us being asked why is annoying and is seen as a challenge to our authority.

As Mark says:

However, for Generation Y workers, “why” is not a dirty word. They were raised in different times. These adults grew up in a period where parents not only focused on their children, but set them on a pedestal, told them they were unique and important, and fought for them to be not just seen, but heard as well. Generation Y children were also taught that there is learning value in everything they do – so that every job that must be done has a reason, meaning, or significance. They were taught to look at the “big picture” and how their contribution fits in with everything around them.

Generation Y workers want to know how they, as well as their work, fit into the whole. They want to know how the tasks they do affect the department, organization, field, or world as a whole. They’ve grown up wanting their lives and work to be meaningful, and they want to see how meaningful it will actually be. Generation Y workers have little patience for tasks that are rote and, as they see it, meaningless. So, as a manager, you need to make their work fit into the big picture. The clearer you make it, the more productive they will be. Pre-empting the “why?” question by assigning tasks AND giving the big picture up front is a trick that top managers have learned.

Second, understand that Generation Y workers want to know the Significance of what they are doing. If you can anticipate their questions, then certainly pre-empt them by providing the reason. But, because these are often unanticipated questions, give yourself time to respond or put the work back on them. If you don’t know the answer, it is fine to say, “I don’t know, but I can find out.” It is also more than OK to give them permission to search for the answer themselves, or to try to change things (with you guiding the process, of course).

Yesterday I taught a workshop for baby boomers on using social media as a business tool and not a single person asked why would they want to learn this. At the same time, I've given an assignment on researching how Twitter could be used by businesses and while the Gen Y students haven't asked me why, it's clear to me now that many of them do not see the big picture or the significance of the assignment.  As professors (many of us baby boomers), I believe we need to help our students understand why we give them the assignments we do.

You can read Mark's entire article here:

 

Dear Dr. Kirk: How To Handle Unhappy Students?

Dear Dr. Kirk:

I had a self-appointed student representative inform me that students in my Business Communication course were unhappy with their grades and the fact that I returned homework without going over it and telling them what they did wrong. Please know that I ‘actually’ graded the papers and made edits as needed.

 

To say the least, I am disappointed. I was enjoying this class and the students until this happened. I admit that I have thin skin!

 

Do you have a response/wisdom you can share on this subject? I would be grateful.

 

Disappointed Teacher

 

Dear Disappointed:

I would suggest you do a mid-term teaching evaluation at this time. I did this for a class I had last year that had done very poorly on their first exam. I had them answer the following questions on paper anonymously the week after that exam. I first asked about what was going well (to reinforce for both me and them that much of the class is going well!), then what they thought they needed to do to improve their grades (emphasizing that they do have the responsibility for learning), and what I could do to help this process (so they could see me as a coach!). They liked being able to give feedback even though I did not use all their suggestions. I do a class blog so I posted the questions and answers for all to read. You could do this on Blackboard also.

 

Hope this helps. I would also tell the students when giving back papers to come see you during office hours (remind them when these are) if they need more feedback on how you graded. Few will do this but it does make them feel as if they could.

 

Keep in mind too that you have one person’s opinion that “students were unhappy.” We do tend to let one or a few students with negative opinions outweigh the good ones!

 

Good luck. I taught Business Communication many years ago early in my teaching career so can relate to the work load!

 

Dr. Kirk

Blogs As A Knowledge Management Tool In The Classroom

For those of you who are interested in using blogs in the classroom, here's a paper I recently presented in Dallas at the Southwest Academy of Management meeting. My co-author, Timothy Johnson, has included a rubric for grading blogs.

Download Kirk & Johnson SWAM 2010 Proceedings-1

 

 

Teaching Teachers In Dallas

I'm flying to Dallas today to talk about teaching at the Southwest Academy of Management Doctoral Student Consortium. One of the participants will get a free copy of my book, Taking Back the Classroom: Tips for the College Professor on Becoming a More Effective Teacher!

An 18-Minute A Day Plan To Manage Your Time

Does this sound familiar? Peter Bregman, author and CEO, writes:

“Yesterday started with the best of intentions. I walked into my office in the morning with a vague sense of what I wanted to accomplish. Then I sat down, turned on my computer, and checked my email. Two hours later, after fighting several fires, solving other people's problems, and dealing with whatever happened to be thrown at me through my computer and phone, I could hardly remember what I had set out to accomplish when I first turned on my computer.”

Bregman suggests using 18 minutes a day to manage your day:

STEP 1 (5 Minutes) Set Plan for Day. Before turning on your computer, sit down with a blank piece of paper and decide what will make this day highly successful. What can you realistically accomplish that will further your goals and allow you to leave at the end of the day feeling like you've been productive and successful? Write those things down.

Now, most importantly, take your calendar and schedule those things into time slots, placing the hardest and most important items at the beginning of the day. And by the beginning of the day I mean, if possible, before even checking your email. If your entire list does not fit into your calendar, reprioritize your list. There is tremendous power in deciding when and where you are going to do something.

STEP 2 (1 minute every hour) Refocus. Set your watch, phone, or computer to ring every hour. When it rings, take a deep breath, look at your list and ask yourself if you spent your last hour productively. Then look at your calendar and deliberately recommit to how you are going to use the next hour. Manage your day hour by hour. Don't let the hours manage you.

STEP 3 (5 minutes) Review. Shut off your computer and review your day. What worked? Where did you focus? Where did you get distracted? What did you learn that will help you be more productive tomorrow?

You can read the entire article here.