Recently President Obama announced his “It’s On Us” campaign that calls on all college-aged men to step up their efforts when it comes to protecting women on campus. The program also calls on colleges that receive federal funding to take a tougher stance against sexual assault and to have prevention programs in place.
The President has the backing of some celebrity faces to bring his plan some attention, including Kerry Washington and Jon Hamm. It seems like a winning plan on its own, but set against the context of the changing college landscape, some people are crying foul.
Less men are enrolling in college classes than they did even five years ago, as the number of women continues to rise. Several lawsuits have been brought by young men against their colleges alleging discrimination when it comes to assault cases — and some young men have won. There are over 30 cases still in the court system now, which represents a 400% increase in just 4 years. Some are claiming that young men are the actual victims because they are facing unfair judgments from colleges that are afraid of losing funding without making an assault statement.
All sides of these issues should be considered of course, but I think that President Obama is on the right side of the debate with his new campaign. Asking peers to watch out for each other, and step up when something seems awry, is a smart way to prevent a lot of the lawsuits in the first place. Colleges cannot control their student body outside learning hours and drinking on campus is not going away any time soon. So placing the responsibility to prevent sexual assault on the students themselves is an effective solution.
What do you think? Are young men getting a bad end of the deal when it comes to increased anti-sexual assault policies on college campuses?
**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**
A guest column by Karen Bresnahan
In recent years, there has been a lot of chatter on the internet about why cell phones shouldn’t be allowed in classrooms. Some teachers and parents are dead set against the idea, while others think it could work.
Schools everywhere are busy making new rules about cell phones. Some schools allow students to carry their phones, but only use them at lunch or in between classes, while others have banned the phones altogether from the learning environment.
The debate, it seems, has centered more on the negative side of the argument which views cell phones as a distraction, a temptation, and a detriment to learning because students can use them to avoid paying attention in class by texting on social media or playing video games, or to cheat on tests, by looking up the answers on Google.
As a parent, I always try to use my common sense when thinking about what I should teach my children. It seems to me that cell phones can be a difficulty or a benefit, depending entirely on the attitude of the teacher. After all, they get to decide what happens in their classroom.
I know, as a mom, how important it is for my kids to know what good behavior and bad behavior is at home. At school, it is no different for the teacher who must show the students what is expected of them and to enforce the rules the same way a parent does.If my child uses a cell phone in the classroom to text their friends or play video games, I expect the teacher to do something about it.
But, cell phones don’t have to always be tied to the expectation of bad behavior or misconduct. There can be a positive side. There are many ways cell phones can actually help children learn. Our kids already use the phones every day and they enjoy using them.
Do we want to take technology away from them and punish them for using it, or should we motivate them to use it in good ways?
With or without technology, it is always important to make sure our children know how to learn. It is up to parents and teachers to show them how. The best teachers know all the different ways to motivate students to learn, so the attitude of the teacher is the most important thing when it comes to deciding about cell phones. There are many ways that cell phones can add to learning.
Students can use their phones to do Google searches about any subject. The cameras on phones make it possible for them to take photos and videos for a school project or record an important school event. Phones can be used in emergencies to call for help, or to text a parent about a problem. Phones can be used on field trips to find locations, or on a daily basis, to make communication easier between students and teachers. Cell phones are a way for teachers to make learning applicable to real life and to let students have fun while learning.
Teachers are already finding helpful ways to use technology in the classroom and cell phones are just another way for students to use the internet to connect them to educational resources. Cell phones have become like tiny computers in their hands because the phones are so much better than they used to be.
Computer applications and software are making it easier for students and teachers to share information. Things like Dropbox, Evernote, Schooltown, Socrative, Wiffiti, and Polleverywhere are helpful online resources that many teachers are using now. Cell phone use supports the popular concepts of flipped classrooms and blended learning.
We live in a technology abundant world and cell phones have become a way of life for families. Most children already use cell phones long before they come to school. As adults, we rely upon technology every day, and it makes no sense to discourage our children from using it productively at school.
As a parent, I expect my children to behave at home and I support what the teacher does in the classroom. If a teacher wants to use cell phone technology as a tool for learning in the classroom, I am all for it. But if a teacher wants to take my child’s phone away when he uses it to misbehave, I am in favor of that too.
I want school to be a fun and active learning environment for my children, where technology allows them to quickly access information, and stimulates them to find exciting new ways to learn anything they want to learn. As long as what they are doing in the classroom peaks their individual interests, I am happy.
Cell phones are just another form of technology that can be used to help students become better and faster at learning. Phones can also be used for group sharing and hands on learning that has been shown to have a 90 percent retention rate.
To me, the argument is not about why we shouldn’t use phones in the classroom, but how can we best use technology as a tool to make learning more exciting and more fun, so that students can learn and grow to be self-motivated learners for the rest of their lives.
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Karen Bresnahan is a professional writer, photographer and artist from Boise, Idaho. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Communications from the University of Idaho and is the mother of three children. She is a small business owner of Romantic Idaho Weddings, KBLifelines Positive Quotes, and Idaho Naturals Desertscapes artwork. She enjoys writing about education, parenting, health and fitness and positive thinking. Her goal is to motivate, educate and inspire others through her writing and photography. You can connect with her through email at [email protected] or on Twitter @idaho1111
One study after another has shown a wide educational achievement gap between the poorest and wealthiest children in the United States. This prompted researchers at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a group focused on narrowing inequality, to study and conclude that if America could improve education performance for the average student, everyone would benefit.
The U.S. ranks behind more than 33 advanced industrialized countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development when it comes to math and science scores. The study used scores from the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment, a test used around the world to measure and compare achievement.
America ranks behind countries such as Korea, Poland and Slovenia in the 24th spot.
If the U.S. could move up a few notches to number 19 – so the average American score would match the O.E.C.D. average – it would add 1.7 percent to the nation’s gross domestic product over the next 35 years, according to estimates by the Washington Center. This could lead to approximately $900 billion in higher government revenue.
If the U.S. scores matched Canada, number 7 of the O.E.C.D. scale, America’s gross domestic product would increase by 6.7 percent. After taking inflation into account, this is a cumulative increase of $10 trillion by 2050.
The achievement gap in America is a pressing issue, and it is certainly something we have to hone in on to eliminate. I hope to see our country’s O.E.C.D. ranking improve in the near future so we can narrow, and eventually close, the achievement gap and benefit from the boost in the economy too.
Behind every successful adult is at least one person who pushed him or her to greatness. If you ask some of the world’s highest achievers what motivated them to keep going, they usually mention a specific person who inspired them along the way – a parent, a teacher, a mentor, a coach.
Think about the people in your own life who made a positive impact when you were young. If you are an educator, it was probably a teacher of your own who inspired you to take that next step and answer the call to teach. There were likely other less-direct influences on your career choice, and others who influenced other parts of the positive parts of your adult life.
Now imagine what it would look like if all of those mentors – those teachers, those coaches – had been able to combine their efforts for a singular purpose: guiding you on the road to successful adulthood. It’s a pretty amazing thought, right? But most of those people were probably from different circles of your life with you (a kid) being the only connection between them. Technology is changing that though, by better aligning the important relationships in a student’s life.
More specifically, Learning Relationship Management is delving deeper into how mentors like teachers and coaches help guide all students to success — both academically, and in other areas of life. The Learning Relationship Management Alliance is a leader in this student-friendly technology that can also be applied to other groups that benefit from mentor support, like senior citizens in assisted living.
The LRM Alliance created this infographic to summarize exactly what the vision is for this relationship technology, including a need to cultivate authentic relationships, personalize learning, streamline content, and connect networks in a student’s life. Take a look:
So how is the LRM Alliance progressing these ideas in a coherent way that any district can implement? By combining the strengths of several leading companies to raise awareness about the many benefits to this learning setup. This group of edtech innovators is changing the way students succeed through electronic means that extend beyond academic pursuits. The five companies that make up the LRM Alliance are:
Through community-enabled mentorship, the strengths of a variety of people associated with each student is tapped. This includes, and is not limited to, parents, teachers, sports coaches, and more. Even older siblings can be included in the community to help encourage, monitor and ultimately guide the student to positive learning outcomes.
When it comes to personalized and blended learning, LRM allows K-20 brick and mortar schools and online schools to move from small pilot programs to large, full-scale implementation. Teachers and administrators have more information on how students are progressing and can tailor lessons to better fit their needs and learning styles. Personalized learning paths are in turn supported through learning relationship management and strengthened by the mentors outside the classroom who are in the student’s network. Learning Relationship Management does not just setup personalized and blended learning lesson plans; it gives students the tools to execute those plans.
Learning Relationship Management is not just about prescriptive methods, though, or simply handing out assignments. The students themselves are an integral part of the process of goal-setting, intervention planning and the communication that takes place about them. Every student can benefit from LRM tools because it does not dictate what people must take part. If a student lives with grandparents, or has a drama teacher but no sports coaches, or even has a trusted teacher he wants to keep in the system even when class has ended, LRM technology makes all of that possible.
Learning Relationship Management has the potential to combine what schools are already doing right with a stronger support group outside the classroom. There can be numerous people (invited by the student and overseen by the lead adult administrator) who weigh in on the goals, benchmarks and activities of the student. There is a lot of power in the community-enabled coaching model and the more people who can contribute to the success of a student — in a streamlined, productive way — the better that student will fare in school, and in life.
It’s no secret that teachers spend a lot of non-instructional time on paperwork. It seems as data tracking with students has improved, the amount of it that teachers are asked to do has risen. Grading assignments and filling out report cards are just a drop in the bucket of keeping up with the data needed for individual students, schools, districts and states. The data is well-intended of course and meant to ensure that students are on track, both academically and otherwise.
It just takes time. A lot of it. Technology has made it easier to track student achievements and development but in most cases, has not streamlined that data in the best way possible. Even digital systems often overlap with each other and require the same data to be entered more than once.
Just this week, MIDAS Education released its EEM (Education Enterprise Management) solution intended to bring all student data together in one spot. EEM is an edtech-wide movement that favors integration of information systems, rather than having a need for separate ones. Customized instruction is the aim of the MIDAS system that gives real-time access to teachers, parents, students and administrators through a user-friendly Web interface. MIDAS is not just a curation tool that gives users a single sign on — it actually replaces all of these systems with a single platform powered by one massive database.
MIDAS encompasses the functionality of up to 13 different software packages in one EEM solution, with a single log-in and an intuitive user interface.
I really like the idea of housing everything in one spot and making it accessible to everyone who needs the information. This not only saves time for the educator and administrators, but ultimately benefits the students. More streamlined policies on data strengthen the help kids can receive throughout their P-20 careers.
Interactive, multimedia environments can turn reading into something that students actually enjoy.
By Ted Levine
Reading is the most fundamental skill an early learner can develop to start on a path towards success, both as a student and as a young citizen. But I hear from educators all the time about how hard it is to engage reluctant readers, especially at the elementary level when development is most crucial. So the question then becomes: What tactics can we use as educators to encourage those reluctant readers to turn the corner, and ultimately to get them excited about reading and learning?
Just like any other skill, reading is something everyone needs to work at. It requires time, effort, and repetition in order to be properly developed. While educators have the important task of working with young learners to develop their reading skills, student also need support and encouragement at home. No tactics or “shortcuts” will help reluctant readers make progress unless there is time carved out in class and at home to focus on their reading. Having said that, there are some key tactics that educators can use to help drive reluctant readers down the path towards reading proficiency—and even enjoyment.
1) Invite young learners to engage in multimedia learning environments. A multimedia learning environment may consist of reading texts, photographs, videos, audio, and even some interactive elements, all mashed up into one single experience. Technology is often overlooked when it comes to reading, but multimedia learning environments can provide an incredible springboard for students who are reluctant to pick up a book.
Young learners are often drawn into the excitement and movement of multimedia elements, particularly video and interactive content. By contrast, huge chunks of text and reading environments that lack any visually engaging components are daunting for reluctant readers.
We recently held a webinar with Dr. Kimberly Greene, an associate professor of education at Brandman University. Dr. Greene had strong opinions about the importance of shorter passages, approachable fonts, and digital reading environments that deliver an inviting experience. Another of her strong opinions is the second tactic I will share:
2) Don’t send reluctant readers into environments that are too “childish.” This point struck a particularly strong chord with the webinar’s attendees, who were mostly upper elementary and middle school educators.
For example, let’s take a 6th-grade student who currently reads at a 3rd-grade level. The print or digital reading environments available at that reading level often have a childish design. Reading something obviously designed for young kids can be a source of embarrassment for the student to read in front of his or her peers, and oftentimes is counterproductive to achieving the desired outcomes for this type of student. Instead, every student in this example 6th-grade class should be able to experience an interactive reading environment like Kids Discover Online, where every student in class has the same rich reading experience, but at slightly different levels.
3) Start small. For a reluctant reader, sitting down to read for a full hour might feel overwhelming. Aim to have them start with just 15 minutes of reading. You can even begin with five or 10 minutes. No marathon runner kicks off their training season with a 26-mile run. The point is to break down the walls of intimidation and frustration, and to gradually build up your learner’s skills.
4) Create “wow” moments. Getting kids to read is one thing; getting them excited about reading is another. I believe that giving students a reading experience filled with iconic photographs, beautiful illustrations, short-form video, and interactive elements that support the text will create the “wow” moments that every educator so desperately seeks to deliver to his or her students. Having these inspiring moments when they “get it” will lead students to approach reading with feelings of excitement instead of apprehension. Rather than seeing reading as a chore, they will look forward to it and engage on a deeper level with the content.
If we can instill that love of reading in our students, we are giving them a huge head start on the road to academic success.
Ted Levine is the president and CEO of Kids Discover, follow him on twitter, @KIDS_Discover
**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**
A guest post by Anita Ginsburg
Some kids love school, where others struggle a bit more to find excitement and motivation. With a vast and varied career world, one of the best ways to keep kids interested and excited about school is to talk to them about some of the fun careers waiting for them when they finish.
Animator
For the artistic minded creative student the idea of drawing and creating for a living will likely get them excited. If you have a student that seems to spend more time doodling in the margins of their papers than taking notes, take the time to talk with them about enhancing their skills and becoming an animator. They could be working for their favorite tv show, software company, or publisher.
Event Planner
To the social kid that likes to plan parties, talk with them about considering a career in event planning. Whether they enter the wedding business, high end parties, kids events, or something else, they could make a career of planning parties for the rest of their lives.
Meteorologist
Many kids are fascinated with how the world around them works. Talk to your students about the weather and the many fun science based careers. One of the easiest to get kids excited about is meteorology because it is quick and easy to take them outside for a day and explore how the weather around us works.
Mechanical Engineer
To the kid that likes to tinker with objects and loves to figure out how things work, a career in mechanical engineering may be exactly what they are looking for. Encourage students that may have a knack for engineering based careers to embrace their desire to figure out how things work and practice with things such as models, puzzles and logic games. They should be excited about the many career options available with an engineering management master’s degree.
Toy Designer
Most kids love to play with toys, so the idea of coming up with ideas and designing them as they grow is a dream come true. Encourage students to think about the toys they like to play with and the kinds they wish they had. They may just design the next big thing.
Zoologist
For all the animal lovers, a career in zoology may be just perfect. Zoologists work directly with the animals, as well as in conservation and educational settings. Visit the zoo with your students and let them meet with zoologists to find out more about this exciting career.
Even the most studious of kids will have times that they struggle to stay focused and thrilled about their studies. It can be very challenging to keep kids excited and working hard throughout school, but giving them something to motivate them through the tough times can be exactly what they need.
Congress is rattling its saber at colleges and universities with endowments worth U$1 billion or more. Committees from the House and Senate have sent a joint letter to 56 private colleges and universities, asking for comprehensive information about endowment spending and management policies.
Thomas W. Reed, representative for New York’s 23rd Congressional District, is talking about legislation that would require colleges and universities with endowments of $1 billion or more to spend 25 percent of their endowment earnings on financial aid or forfeit their tax-exempt status.
But what is so significant about the $1 billion mark? Are all endowments with $1 billion so huge that Congress should treat them differently than endowments with less than $1 billion? And are all endowments less than $1 billion so small that Congress should ignore them?
From my perspective as a professor who has studied endowments, the only real significance of $1 billion is that it shocks the public because it sounds like so much money.
What really matters is how much buying power a school needs and how much buying power an endowment has. The bigger a school’s budget, the more endowment is necessary. To figure out which colleges and universities have large endowments, you have to consider a school’s expenses.
How do endowments work?
An endowment is like a savings account that exists to support college or university operations. The assets in an endowment usually come from donations. The funds in an endowment are invested; each year a school spends a portion of these returns and then puts the remainder back into the endowment.
In good financial times, an endowment allows a school to spend more on priorities like financial aid, research budgets or professor salaries. In bad financial times, an endowment acts like a rainy day fund to ensure that schools will not have to dramatically reduce spending in important areas.
Because an endowment’s primary purpose is to support institutional operations, the strength of a $1 billion endowment is relative to the size of an institution’s expenses.
To illustrate, I want to take a closer look at three of the schools that received the congressional request for information because they have endowments of $1 billion or more. In the context of this discussion, there’s nothing particularly special about these three schools except that they demonstrate why expenses are relevant to endowment size.
Each year, the National Association of College and University Business Officers ranks endowments by their absolute value. In 2015, Harvard was at the top of the heap with an eye-popping $36.4 billion endowment. Vanderbilt University was in 23rd place, with $4.1 billion. Grinnell College was considerably farther back, coming in 50th with an endowment of almost $1.8 billion.
Now let’s add a fourth school to the mix: Colgate University. As before, in the context of this discussion there’s nothing special about Colgate except that it helps illustrate why endowments and expenses need to be considered simultaneously.
When measured only by absolute endowment value, Colgate is way behind Harvard, Vanderbilt and Grinnell. Colgate comes in 103rd place, with an $892 million endowment. And Colgate was spared the congressional letter because its endowment did not exceed the $1 billion threshold.
Expenses matter
Now consider these same schools, this time in light of both absolute endowment value and all expenses – the costs incurred to fulfill the school’s educational mission, to administer the institution and to fundraise. Unsurprisingly, these four schools have wildly different expenses. Harvard and Vanderbilt are large research universities, while Grinnell and Colgate are small liberal arts colleges.
In 2013 (the most recent year for which data is readily available), Harvard had expenses of $4.4 billion; Vanderbilt, $3.8 billion; Grinnell, $97.6 million; and Colgate, $172.2 million. There’s been a lot of discussion about whether colleges and universities are doing enough to control costs. But to measure the strength of an endowment, we can assume that current institutional expenses are representative of future institutional expenses.
An endowment helps fund scholarships and research budgets. kylebaker, CC BY-NC-SA
Grinnell’s endowment is so enormous that it can pay for a whopping 18 years of expenses, until today’s infants are ready to matriculate. Harvard’s endowment is large enough to cover eight years. And Colgate – which does not exceed the $1 billion threshold – can pay for five years.
But Vanderbilt, with its $4.1 billion endowment, cannot cover even two years’ worth of expenses.
Some academics have argued that endowments are excessively large once the endowment can cover more than two years of expenses. Others have suggested that an endowment is much bigger than a school needs when it can pay for more than five years of expenses.
At some point, an endowment may become vastly larger than what a college or university needs to ensure its success. No school really needs an endowment that is large enough to cover a half-decade or more of expenses. But to determine whether an endowment is so large that it warrants different treatment than others, Congress must consider the endowment in relation to institutional costs. It cannot simply use $1 billion as some kind of magical threshold.
Modifying endowment tax policy
Favorable tax policy is one of the reasons that endowments can accumulate $1 billion or that a school can have an endowment large enough to cover 18 years of expenses. The government collects fewer tax dollars than it otherwise would because donations to endowments qualify for the charitable deduction, and endowments do not have to pay taxes on their investment returns.
In my view, schools like Harvard and Grinnell are going to fight tooth and nail to hang on to this preferential tax treatment. But when a college or university has an endowment that is large enough to cover its expenses for years and years into the future, I believe lawmakers should conclude that the forgone tax dollars would be better spent elsewhere. At some point, an endowment has such ample funds that it no longer needs government subsidy. This means goodbye to tax-free investment returns and to the charitable deduction.
Eliminating the charitable deduction may mean that donors would give less, but they would not stop giving altogether. As I’ve described elsewhere, research has shown that the charitable deduction is only one of the reasons that donors give to colleges and universities. Some donors feel a responsibility to “give back” to their alma matter. Others desire the social status and public recognition that giving can provide, or want to influence institutional policy. Some people give simply because it makes them feel good. For many donors, a combination of all these factors motivates them to give.
But even if eliminating the charitable deduction means that some donors would choose to direct their giving elsewhere, chances are that the recipient organization would need the donation more than a school with a very large endowment.
Although schools are unlikely to see it this way, less preferential tax treatment would actually be a sign of success: it means that donors have been so generous and the endowment has been so well-managed that the school now requires less public assistance than others do.
So, legislators should stop fixating on the $1 billion mark and instead evaluate endowments in their larger institutional context.
Before Congress singles out certain endowments for less preferential tax treatment, it needs to distinguish between endowments that sound obscenely large and those that actually are.
The BYOD Listening Project asks: In the rush to control students’ devices, have we overlooked the ‘moment of teaching’?
By Sharon Price Campbel
If you’re a teacher in the U.S., you have likely bumped into BYOD (bring your own device). Especially in recent years, school districts are rushing to “leave no device behind” and education technology companies are coming up with myriad new products and services to deliver the promise of BYOD Nirvana. At conferences and in district offices, educators are spearheading many iterations of teaching and learning opportunities.
What can we learn from the previous megatrends in education technology? The first small wave of technology occurred when computers were installed in public school offices. They were not to be touched by the likes of teachers, but by trained office professionals only. It took another decade for computers to become available to educators in the teacher’s lounge. By the turn of the millennium, computer-literate teachers began to ask for, beg for, and write grants for computers in the classroom.
A flood of federal money available for technology purchases created the second wave, the Educational Technology Tsunami. To cash in on the gold rush, business suppliers slapped “education friendly” labels on business equipment. Manufacturers racing to get their share of the federal bucks cut corners on research, design, and quality control to get products into the marketplace. Classrooms became a nightmare of unsupported, unreliable hardware and buggy software. Classroom teachers who had been enthusiastic became concerned about job security. They feared reporting faulty equipment and feared that they had inadequate computer skills. When the federal funding ended, school districts found themselves unable to financially support their technological machines and dreams.
Riding the same surge was the “No Child Left Behind” legislation. Its unattainable expectations, on top of education’s first attempt to merge onto the digital freeway, nearly crashed education. Systems had been too quickly adopted and inadequately designed, and were incapable of the tasks they were purchased to perform. School districts became the graveyards of metal hulks and husks of educational technology—and federally-driven, data-based, student failure.
Since then, we have learned and improved. Manufactures and legislators are beginning to include educators in the conversation about expectations and realistic outcomes for tomorrow’s teaching tools. Teachers are getting very good at forming their own independent learning communities, and ideas are spreading faster than ever before. It was during this hyper-connected, surging wave of mobile device integration into all aspects of life that we ushered in BYOD.
It will take work. Early concerns about device security/privacy, unrestricted web access, and the potential for distractions in the classroom have driven the marketplace toward an obsession with control. There are now dozens of device management products that offer instructors and districts varying levels of control over student devices; however, these products don’t serve the fundamental purpose of BYOD in education, which is to improve instruction, empower students for self-directed learning, and leverage this generation of students’ technological prowess to turn the current model of instruction on its head.
In the rush to control students’ devices, we have overlooked the “moment of teaching.” Very few teachers are able to accomplish ordinary tasks, such as grabbing a picture from a document camera and getting it to each student device, without having to halt instruction and fiddle with far too many steps to integrate into teaching. So why is instructional software so clunky when we need it the most? The answer is that most companies making this software rarely set foot in an actual classroom. They are so focused on features and functions that they overlook how the product is used in the classroom during instruction. If one of the purposes of device management is to minimize distractions, shouldn’t the product just work and require no active management on the part of the teacher? Yet most device management products require that the teacher be behind his or her computer to share learning resources or to monitor and control student devices.
We can’t rely on product developers to just deliver brilliance. Rarely through history have major innovations been the result of one person or team, instead they have been the result of teams building on the work of or listening to others. The BYOD marketplace should be listening to the visceral and rational experiences of teachers, administrators, and students to make better products.
EXO U is sponsoring the BYOD Listening Project to strike up a dialogue between teachers, students, parents, administrators, and the marketplace, with the goal of pinning down and solving the increasing challenges that teachers and students face when attempting to integrate devices into a daily classroom teaching. I am serving as a moderator for the project, and we’re asking for your perspective on mobile devices in the classroom. What works? What doesn’t? Where are the significant pain points or problems at the interface of mobile devices and learning?
The BYOD Listening Project is asking for your engagement and in return, we will analyze, collate, and report themes and major takeaways. Our aim is to provide highly useful data and models for BYOD implementation that improve that moment of teaching.
Sharon Price Campbel has taught in Napa County Juvenile Offender programs, an alternative high school, and Youth Employment programs. For the last 28 years she has been a middle school teacher. In 2009, she was named a California School Master, the oldest, most prestigious California education award.
“You’re in engineering!?! Wow, you must be super-smart…”
It has been over 10 years since I was a first-year engineering undergraduate student; but when I remember the time a fellow female student made this comment, I can still feel a visceral, bodily reaction: my muscles tense, my heart rate increases, my breath quickens.
Comments like these on the surface appear as compliments. But when unpacked, they reveal subversive attitudes about women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).
As I think back to this encounter, there are two aspects that stay with me. First was the surprised, skeptical tone of the other student’s voice that conveyed it was surprising and unusual (or, to put it more crudely, freakish) that I was in engineering. Second was the attitude that since I was in engineering, this could be explained only if there was something exceptional or outstanding (or, once again, freakish) about me. Women remain an underrepresented group in STEM. In Canada, women account for 23% of engineering graduates and 30% of mathematics and computer graduates. In the United States, women are 12% of the engineering and 26% of the computingworkforce.
The reality is that STEM professions are most commonly male and it remains surprising when these professional roles are held by women. The large gender imbalance means that women may naturally feel they’re outsiders at school and at work. This situation is often uncomfortable and mentally demanding, when even just showing up and doing your job comes with constant social stresses and anxiety. Ironically, the difficulties that they (we) encounter often dissuade the next generation of women from joining us. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle that we need to break.
Fight or flight, designed for quick response
Because of their underrepresentation, women in STEM often regularly question their place in these professions. When things feel uncomfortable – like when I was confronted with that comment a decade ago – our brains can overinterpret the situation as an imminent threat. And there’s an evolutionary reason for that physical response.
This stress response evolved in human beings to help us navigate a wild, dangerous and unpredictable world. When faced with imminent danger, like a pouncing tiger, our bodies have evolved an automatic reaction to help us react fast. Stress hormones are released, the heart beats harder and faster, breathing becomes rapid and muscles tense, ready for action.
This automatic response prepares our bodies for possible actions: fight or flight! From the perspective of evolutionary adaptation, it’s in our best interests NOT to distinguish between life-threatening and non-life-threatening dangers. Act first, think later. In the African wilds in which early humans roamed, the consequence of underreacting could mean death.
Good during lion attack, less good during daily life
In modern life, we don’t have to worry much about attacks from lions, tigers or bears. But adaptive mechanisms are still very much a part of our brain’s biology.
The flight-or-flight response is intended to be short-term. The problem comes in when stress becomes a daily part of life, triggering a physiological response that’s actually detrimental to health over the long term. Repeated and long-term releases of the stress hormone cortisol cause changes in brain structure that leave individuals more susceptible to anxiety and mood disorders, including depression. When exposed to long-term stress, the brain structure called the hippocampus shrinks, affecting one’s short-term memory and ability to learn.
These physical stress responses can unfortunately run at a constant low level of activation in people who are made to feel like they don’t belong or aren’t good enough – such as women in STEM. Social situations like my undergraduate encounter – and their ramifications – are a part of day-to-day life.
Sadly, the percentages of women working in these fields have remained stagnant for decades. In 1987, women represented 20% of the STEM workforce in Canada. In 2015, their numbers remain unchanged at 22%. In the United States, the reality is very similar, with women representing24% of the workforce. Confrontational reactions like “You’re in engineering!?!” communicate the message that as a woman, one may not belong in the social group of engineering. The brain perceives these kinds of social interactions as threatening, dangerous and stressful.
The social cues that women may not belong in male-dominated STEM fields can often be subtle. For example, researchers have shown that the presence in labs of objects considered stereotypical of computer science, such as Star Trek and video game posters, are perceived as stereotypically masculine and can dissuade women from expressing interest in topics like computer programming.
Moreover, seemingly complimentary “Wow, you must be super-smart!” comments also communicate an even more troubling possibility that, in order to belong in this group (of men), as a woman, one must be exceptional. Women + Engineering = Super Smart.
But what if a female student is not exceptionally intelligent? What if she is only ordinarily smart? Or, even more troubling, what if she does not believe that she is smart at all? In her mind, she becomes a sheep in wolf’s clothing, an impostor who has tricked those around her into accepting her into a group where she does not belong. From the brain’s perspective, this is literally interpreted as being in the lion’s den.
Women can flourish in STEM, but it can mean shutting out the noise. USAID Asia, CC BY-NC
STEM should welcome everyone
So what can be done? If we are to increase the participation of women in STEM fields, we must make workplace and educational environments inclusive. In order to thrive, female students need to believe that they belong in technical professions, in both academia and the private sector.
The social marginalization caused by gender imbalances in STEM programs can be mitigated. Targeted intervention programs that foster social belonging and coping mechanisms to deal with stress and threat can help women develop skills to handle the mental challenges caused by gender inequality and help women integrate into their male-dominated environment.
Connecting female students with female professional role modelssuch as mentors or instructors has also been extremely effective at improving women’s self-concept and commitment to STEM.
Finally, campaigns like the #Ilooklikeanengineer hashtag disrupt our common stereotyping of STEM professionals and help support a cultural shift.
The rates of female representation in STEM will not change overnight. It will probably be at least another generation before parity becomes an achievable target. But it’s through changing these attitudes and stereotypes that we will reduce some of the social stresses on women in these fields, helping women choose STEM as a career path, stay in these fields, and most importantly, remain healthy and happy.
