1. Life of the Mind
2012 Leader Seminar
“A university is composed of people. Its lifeblood is the
interaction of people (administrators, faculty, students and
support personnel) over a period of time.”
Faculty Handbook, University of Tennessee 2010, p63
2. “A university is composed of people. Its lifeblood is the
interaction of people (administrators, faculty, students and
support personnel) over a period of time.”
Faculty Handbook, University of Tennessee 2010, p63
3. “It is in this middle or ‘liminal’ state – the
ambiguous place of being neither here nor there –
that anthropologists see profoundly creative and
transformative possibilities. …
Undergraduate culture itself becomes this liminal
communal space where students bond with one
another, sometimes for life, and, amid rules of
suspended normality and often hardship, explore
their identities, wrestle with their parents’ world,
and wonder about their future.”
Excerpts from Rebekah Nathan’s My Freshman Year: What a Professor
learned by becoming a student. London. Cornell UP: 2005
4. “Introduction to Academics”
• Technology (Blackboard, A-Z Index)
• Plagiarism / Academic Integrity
• Research and Resources for Student Success
• Civility & Community
5. Take-Aways
• Concept of social
constructions vis-à-vis
categories such as race
and identity
• Ability/Opportunity to
mold your own identity
6. Creative Response
“This year’s Life of the Mind response invites you to
think about and share one or more parts of your
identity that are not accidental but intentional,
adopted or created by yourself, for yourself. This
could be a character trait, behavior, like/dislike, or
particular way of thinking or looking at the world
that you adopted based on something you read,
thought, heard, observed, or experienced.”
From 2012 LOM Reader’s Guide
Elizabeth Schonagen (schonagen@utk.edu)
7. Who are you?
Accidental vs. intentional identities
Design by Chelsea Angelo, First-Year Studies
8. Dr. De Ann Pendry,
Senior Lecturer,
Anthropology
11. Discussion: Part I
Discussion Goal: To
provide an opportunity
for first-year students to
bond with one another
and experience
discussion in a college
environment.
12. Fail-Safe Openers –
The sticky note approach (thanks, Kitty Cornett!):
Write one thought per note. Group similar notes together;
representatives talk about main train of thought for each group;
outliers discussed, etc.
Which story or moment in the book did you
find most memorable?
Write something you learned from The
Accidental Asian and/or Eric Liu’s
presentation.
What was your main take-away from Eric’s
speech?
13. Model I: Think-Pair-Share
Think: Consider the statement with relation to
what you’ve learned from The Accidental Asian
and your own experience.
Pair: Share your thoughts with a partner. Identify
similarities between your two statements with
respect to The Accidental Asian.
Share: Share these findings with the class
(discussion flows from there).
14. Related statements on categories / groups
“We all know we are unique individuals but tend to see each other as
representatives of groups. It’s a natural tendency; since we must see the
world in patterns in order to make sense of it; we wouldn’t be able to deal
with the daily onslaught of people and objects if we couldn’t predict a lot
about them and feel that we know who or what they are.”
– Deborah Tannen, Professor of Linguistics, Georgetown University
“The ability to distinguish friend from foe helped early humans survive, and
the ability to quickly and automatically categorize people is a fundamental
quality of the human mind. Categories give order to life, and every day, we
group other people into categories based on social and other characteristics.
This is the foundation of stereotypes, prejudice and, ultimately,
discrimination.”
From Tolerance.org
16. MODEL II: Three Stay, One Stray
Step 1: 4-5 students receive an excerpt/question
to discuss.
Step 2: After a few minutes, one person from each
group (“voyagers”) stands and moves to another
group, adding to that group’s conversation.
Step 3: Repeat step 2 (2x), then send all Voyagers
home.
Step 4: Home group shares with one another, with
class discussion progressing from there.
17. MODEL II: Three Stay, One Stray
The post-ethnic shift(?)
The Accidental Asian was written around the
time you were turning to be a teenager [for
students!]. Think back to this time and your
experiences growing up.
- Do you think your generation is less pre-
occupied with race? What has changed in
your lifetime, if anything, and in your
experience, is the post-ethnic shift Liu
envisioned occurring?
- Has the notion of race outlived its usefulness?
If not, where should we go from here?
18. Folder Review
• Welcome Week schedule
• Discussion Leader schedule
• First-Year Student / LOM Data
• Prompts for Discussion
MODEL 1: Think-Pair-Share / Quick-Thinks
MODEL 2: Three Stay, One Stray
For more great discussion resources, visit the Tennessee Teaching and Learning Center
tenntlc.utk.edu
19. More Resources
Campus Map App – Now available in iTunes!
“Teaching in Racially Diverse College Classrooms” - from the
Derek Bok Center for Teaching and
Learning, Harvard University
Room locked?
Call Zone Maintenance 974-5346
Need sticky notes? Index cards?
See Tisa!
21. Refresh
Class of 2017:
Environmental Sustainability
Suggest a title!
Suggest a future theme!
Want to be part of the Review Board? Let us
know! Name/Email
Thank you for your feedback!
22. Life of the Mind
Thank you for your support,
and enjoy the discussion!
23. “What do our first-
year students have
questions about?”
24. ..
“What might
students have
questions
about?”
26. & students’ comfort
with the University
Level of Before After % Change
nervousness Discussion Discussion
Extremely nervous 14.8% 3.7% - 11.1%
Very nervous 19.5% 10.7% -8.8%
Moderately nervous 35.2% 29.4% -5.8%
Not very nervous 24.3% 38.8% + 14.5%
Not at all nervous 9.1% 17.5% +8.4%
Source: Welcome Week Survey, First-Year Studies & Student Activities
August 2011 (N=384)
27. FYS 100-
Learning Outcomes
% Student
Outcome Agreement
(N=1870)
apply understanding of UT's plagiarism and 85%
Academic Integrity Policies
navigate the basic IT tools used by all 85%
students, including Blackboard, MyUTK, and
the A-Z Index
investigate role in keeping UT's diverse 77%
campus community a civil and welcoming
learning environment
select and participate in campus and/or 71%
service activities based on personal interests
Source: Welcome Week Survey, First-Year Studies & Student Activities
August 2011 (N=384)
28. “Negative Feedback” In the absence of dialogue…
Discussion
“We expected that the improvement strategies would communicate that
although the task perhaps is difficult, it can be accomplished, and, thus,
would enhance students’ self-efficacy beliefs. Contrary, the number of
improvement strategies negatively predicted students’ self-efficacy
beliefs: the more strategies were provided, the lower their reported self-
efficacy was. This negative relation existed especially for students whose
self-efficacy beliefs were moderate or low before they received
improvement strategies.” (181)
“We suggest that teachers have a feedback dialogue with their students,
so that they can fine-tune their strategies to the particular student and if
necessary demonstrate strategies… This may prevent that the teacher’s
provision of strategies comes across as an indication of the teacher’s
underestimation of the student’s capacities.” (182)
(Duijnhouwer, Prins, & Stokking (2012). “Feedback providing
improvement strategies and reflection on feedback use: Effects on
students’ writing motivation, process, and performance.” Learning and
Instruction, 22, 171-184.
29. “As the University’s campaign on spreading civility and
community grows, the Life of the Mind program grants a
unique opportunity to engage incoming freshmen with a
book encapsulating civility and community as literary
themes.”
Chancellor’s Task Force on Civility and Community
Final Report, August 23, 2010, p4 “Programs and Services
Recommendations”
MODEL 1: Quick-Thinks
30. From Lawrence, J. (2005). Addressing diversity in higher education: Two models for facilitating
student engagement and mastery, in Higher education in a changing world, Proceedings of the
28th HERDSA Annual Conference, Sydney, 3-6 July 2005: p243.
31. Cited
Capon, N., and Kuhn, D. (2004). "What's So Good About Problem-Based Learning?"
Cognition and Instruction, 22 (1), 61-79.
Dochy, Filip, Segers, Mien, Van den Bossche, Piet, & Gijbels, David (2003). Effects of
problem-based learning: a meta-analysis. Learning and Instruction, 13, 533–568.
Eisenstaedt, R. S., Barry, W. E., & Glanz, K. (1990). Problem-based learning:
Cognitive retention and cohort traits of randomly selected participants and
decliners. Academic Medicine, 65, Suppl.(9), 11–12.
King, A. (1990). Enhancing peer interaction and learning in the classroom through
reciprocal learning. American Educational Research Journal, 27(4), 664-687.
Tans, R. W., Schmidt, H. G., Schade-Hoogeveen, B. E., & Gijselaers, W. H. (1986).
Sturing van het onderwijsleerproces door middel van problemen: een
veldexperiment/Problem-based learning: A field experiment. Tijdschrift voor
Onderwijsresearch, 11(1), 35–46.
Van Blankenstein, F., Dolmans, D., van der Vleuten, C., and Schmidt, H. (2011).
Which cognitive processes support learning during small-group discussion? The
role of providing explanations and listening to others. Instructional Science, 39,
189-204.
Webb, N. (1989). Peer interaction and learning in small groups. International
Journal of Educational research, 13, 21-40.
Notas del editor
How we’re preparing students with FYS 100 when they come to your class
There is a lot we can take away, but we tried to draw out these in particular…
What students have already considered / accidental/intentional
