The Princeton Review has once again named Baruch College as one of the best 371 colleges in America. The report also features 62 rankings lists on topics including “Professors Get High Marks,” “Class Discussions Encouraged,” and “Most Beautiful Campus.” Each rankings lists presents the top and the bottom 20 colleges. With Baruch’s status as most diverse college, it would be nice to see it among the top-20 in the category “Race/Class Interactions”: http://www.princetonreview.com/schoollis… But we are not part of this list.

Maybe it’s a tall order for the most diverse college in the nation to also be one with lots of race and class interaction? But why not?

A 2005 article in The Ticker lamented that students at Baruch are “divided by race” (i.e., that clubs and friendship circles are largely monocultural and that there is too little intercultural/interethnic interaction): http://www.theticker.org/2.10634/divided-by-race-1.1417125

While there is something to be said for the protective comfort that in-groups can provide, we should do better. But how?

The following cultural factors were found to impact learning styles. Collectivism, future orientation, and gender egalitarianism correlated with a preference for abstract conceptualization over concrete experience. The effect of culture was significant. The seven nations are situated on the scale as follows:

A preference for reflective observation over active experimentation was correlated with the cultural factors of uncertainty avoidance and assertiveness; the effect, however, was only marginal. Age and area of specialization had more impact.

The authors argue that, in the first years of higher education, before discipline-specific conditioning has taken root, culture-based differences may be especially pronounced, and that instructors should make sure to design learning situations that take into account cultural differences in learning styles.

How do you teach to each?

References:

Joy, S., & Kolb, D. A. (2009). Are there cultural differences in learning style? International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 33(1), 69-85.

For descriptions of commonly cited cultural dimensions, see Hofstede and Trompenaars/Hampden-Turner.

Question: A student gives a presentation. He has a heavy foreign accent and is at times incomprehensible. Overall, the speech seems well researched and on target. What do you do?

a. Give him an A.

b. Subtract points for incomprehensibility and give him a B.

c. Tell him that the presentation was unacceptable and that he should improve his oral communication proficiency.

Instructors cite a variety of reasons (often with a kernel of truth) why they let incomprehensibility slide:

1. “Asking a student to reduce his/her accent is embarrassing and discouraging.” — It is true that accents are windows to our identity, and that a student changing his/her accent may experience a tangible sense of loss or feel repercussions from home culture friends and family.

2. “It’s not possible to reduce accents in adults. Native accents can be achieved only when we learn the language before puberty.” — It is true that, after the brain hemispheres separate at puberty, a native-sounding accent tends to be more difficult to achieve.

3. “People who don’t understand foreign accents are prejudiced. They should try harder to understand.” — It is true that sometimes the problem lies with the listener. Don Rubin (University of Georgia) conducted a study some years back, in which a recording of a native English speaker was played to undergraduate students. They were told that the speaker was a college instructor and asked to rate his comprehensibility. Some groups were shown a photo of a Caucasian, others a photo of an Asian-looking individual while the recording was played. Although the recording was the same, the Asian-looking individual was ranked less comprehensible than the Caucasian.

Despite these valid objections, I believe it is paramount that we encourage students to improve their oral language skills to a level where a benevolent native speaker can understand without straining. We are doing our students a disservice if we don’t.

Our nonnative students are sometimes being ostracized by native-speaking teammates, who don’t want them to participate in presentations for fear that their grade will be jeopardized. And our nonnative Baruch graduates are sometimes dismissed at the early stages of the job interviewing process, due to heavy accents. The first practice often happens under the radar; the second when it’s too late, and students have left the college. In my view, both practices are unethical. We have a responsibility to provide students with an education that promises workplace success.

How to approach the issue? One way would be to adopt a threshhold model by which we evaluate presentations (as well as papers) only if a basic standard has been met? Any student falling below this standard is asked to revise. A threshold model would require a common standards on what constitutes acceptable form (e.g., more than five errors per page or five incomprehensibilities per minutes of speech, and additional work is indicated).

In my experience, most students welcome the opportunity to improve. When I told a Russian student in a public speaking class some years back that he was not going to pass the course unless he worked on his comprehensibility, he committed himself to weekly tutorials and almost daily language lab work. The change in this student in only one semester was extraordinary. He changed from a low-proficiency speaker to one that was 100% comprehensible.

We are lucky that Baruch offers free services to assist the students: SACC has a number of professional speech tutors (not students, but trained professionals) who work with students one-on-one. We also have a new and well-equipped ESL speech lab that is open 10 hours most days, and even on Saturdays. The lab features tons of excellent materials not only on pronunciation, but also grammar, vocabulary development, conversation management, and more. For more information, please see http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/esllab

Considering that communication skills are consistently ranked at the top of skills desired by employers of college graduates (and oral skills usually outranking written skills at that), we need to make our students aware of these services and make adequate communication skills an integral part of our evaluation procedures.

Question 1: On average, how intellectually challenging are courses at Baruch College? (5 = very challenging; 1 = not challenging at all)

Question 2: On average, how satisfied are you with this level of intellectual challenge?

Question 3: What does “intellectual challenge” mean to you?

Question 4: Which wording would you prefer on the course evaluation form?

Selected Comments:

1. Since English is my second language, courses are very challenging for me.

2. The courses at Baruch College are very challenging. The time frame in which professors needed assignments are not enough, due to the fact that we, the students, have other classes.

3. Although some professors manage to make course work challenging, they still keep students interested.

4. i believe the “intellectual challenge” is subjective to the instructor teaching the course. In some cases they do present a real challenge; on the other hand, some are as easy as it can get!!!

5. I’m glad to see this kind of survey. Most Baruch courses are definitely lacking on the stimulating side. Sometimes it feels like a waste of time–even if the course content seemed promising. Professors seem to be dumbing down a great deal.

6. Some of the courses are stimulating, but for the most part it is professors teaching to get a paycheck (a small one at that) and students participating to get a grade, but there does not seem to be a high level of engagement from either students or instructors.

7. In my experience at Baruch College, the majority of the courses are intellectually stimulating and enforce learning. However, there are some courses that are too difficult, and the work load should be lightened (i.e. Calculus).

8. I love Baruch–their educators, the academics, the social environment, the diversity. I am so proud to be a graduate of Baruch.

Conclusion: Students seem to feel reasonably challenged and find the level of challenge appropriate (Questions 1 and 2). When it comes to the definition of “intellectual challenge,” however, the picture gets somewhat confusing. Some see challenge as stimulation, and others see it as stressful and not essential for learning. (Question 3). The comments echo the confusion: Variably, challenge is seen as coming from lack of language proficiency or lack of time (rather than intellectual difficulty), or defined as positive (related to stimulation and engagement), or negative (likely to reduce interest, not enforcing learning).

Should the last item on the Baruch evaluation form be changed to something less fraught with conflicting interpretations . . . for example, “The course stimulated me intellectually”?

The drafts were supposed to be proofread and in decent shape. The students knew that they can gain back only half the subtracted points through revisions. I also encouraged students to show me their drafts before submitting them to catch problems early on. None of the six students did. They also didn’t go to the Writing Center, although I reminded them several times of its existence.

The classes are capstone courses in communication studies, where the focus usually is on oral communication. The six students’ presentations were quite good, and their course grade, as a result, may be in the C or even B range (despite the paper).

With the courses being capstone courses, most students are seniors; for some, this is their last semester. I am trying to determine how students have been able to get to the end of their college careers, without being able to write adequately.

There is a model of writing learning goals that requires specific evaluation standards (e.g., “students will be able to . . . with 80% accuracy”). If not all students can reach this goal, then the instructor failed (due to inadequate teaching skills or standards that were too high).

My questions:

Do students get to their senior year without adequate writing skills because instructors tend to focus on content, not form?

Should we simply disregard the few students who perform very poorly?

Should we perhaps make it a prerequisite that inadequate writers visit the Writing Center once per week (i.e., without a record of WC attendance, the students won’t pass the course)?

Just yesterday, I looked at a student’s draft of a slideshow for an upcoming presentation. The students are graded on their draft but can gain half the subtracted points back if they revise their drafts and their final slideshow is effective. The student had handed in a draft that was below par and, as a result had lost quite a few points . . . and promptly e-mailed me, saying how disappointed he was. It broke my heart.

I am struggling with a balance between challenging students, motivating them, and grading them effectively. How do you strike that balance?

I have since incorporated the topic of graph animation into one of my courses in international communication and find it enhances student presentations. The assignment is to compare two countries in an area of interest (e.g., education performance, income distribution, air quality) and investigate the reasons for performance difference. Students start by selecting a topic-either from a list I provide, or by consulting newspapers, almanacs, and statistical Web sites for additional ideas. For instance, last semester, a student, Alena, selected the topic “vacation time” from the example list I provided in class. She checked a statistical Web site, www.nationmaster.com, and other online sources for preliminary information and then decided to compare the United States and Germany. Not to promote European ideas , but Germans are getting an average of three times as many days of paid vacation as U.S. Americans. Alena then conducted research using the library’s databases and interviewing an exchange student from Germany. In the end, Alena determined that the factors contributing to longer vacations in Germany include a higher rate of unionization and a more pronounced value placed on leisure.

The project culminates in presentations, for which students learn how to animate statistics (e.g., on PowerPoint) and how to present the animated graphs effectively. Concerning the bar graph on vacation time, for example, Alena needed to speak about the United States while displaying only the U.S. bar, and not show the contrast bar on Germany until ready to discuss it. This precise timing, allowed by animation, works wonders in focusing the audience’s attention and adding an element of anticipation and surprise. And student presentations become more engaging and memorable, as a result.

Students have five minutes for presenting their findings and are asked to limit the number of their slides. In fact, only one slide is required: the statistics slide. I discourage students from displaying the rest of their findings in bullet points. They present the reasons for the country discrepancy orally, learning to focus on the audience and to use presentation graphics only when true visual support is called for.

I’ve found the activity effective in improving presentation skills for two main reasons:

• Often, students do not have a feeling for how much information can be comfortably presented in a given period of time; as a result, they may either try to include too much or too little information in their presentations. With the focus on only one piece of statistics, the amount of information is a perfect fit for short presentations of about five minutes and lets students experience what a focused presentation feels like.
• Many students have a desire to fine-tune their computer skills. The activity provides an opportunity to learn a valuable, yet fun skill: statistics animation.

A limitation of the activity is that statistical data are often difficult to analyze. When they are collected from different sources-as they often are in international comparisons-care needs to be taken that the data sets are comparable and that potentially hidden factors (e.g., whether holidays are included in vacation calculations) are determined. Another caveat is that animation, if overdone, is distracting. So, it’s not clear, whether the technique would be as effective if one had to present more than one graph.

In my class, the activity promotes global awareness and, in cases, where the United States is the lower-performing contrast country, encourages activism and interest in improvements at home. But the project is very versatile and can be easily adapted to other subjects. I’d be interested to learn what activities related to graphs other people have found successful . . . or what problems are common.

References

Guadagno, R. E., Sundie, J. M., Asher, T., & Cialdini, R. B. (2006). The persuasive power of computer-based multimedia presentations. Unpublished manuscript, Arizona State University.

Nationmaster. (2007). Facts and statistics. Retrieved September 8, 2008, from http://www.nationmaster.com