>> Jim Cooper: I'm Jim Cooper, Professor of Graduate Education, California State University, Dominguez Hills. We're on the campus of Cal State Dominguez Hills speaking with Dr. James A. Anderson. Dr. Anderson is Professor of Psychology, Vice President for Student Success, and Vice Provost for Institutional Assessment and Diversity at the University at Albany, State University of New York. His research is focused on the development of learning styles across gender, race, culture, and class, and he's examined how diversity impacts student learning, retention, and overall institutional effectiveness. Dr. Anderson has served as an American Counsel on Education Fellow, a Danforth Fellow, and a Learning Communities Fellow. In 2005, Dr. Anderson was awarded the National Association of Student Personnel Administration Outstanding Contribution to Education Award,. In 2004, he was honored by the National Association of Universities and Land Grant Colleges Commission on Human Resources and Social Change, and received an outstanding service award. Dr. Anderson's most recent book, Documenting the Educational Benefits of Diversity, a Twenty-First Century Paradigm of Teaching and Learning, will be published this fall. He currently serves on the board of trustees at Villanova University. James, let's talk a little bit about issues of definition. Some people when they think of diversity just sort of think of racial ethnic issues, but I know in reading some work that you've done that your vision of diversity is a much larger one. Could you talk a little bit about how you see diversity? >> James Anderson: Sure Jim. Colleges and universities have the responsibility not only of preparing students in terms of their academic training and for the workplace. But we also have to think in terms of the twenty-first centuries. So our students are being prepared for a global workforce, They are being prepared to become leaders and effective citizens in a pluralistic democracy. And we owe it to them. It's our responsibility. It’s part of our mission, and most importantly, we have to make it part of our teaching learning models at our institutions. There is not a single discipline that I'm aware of that does not address in the real world diversity or globalism in some significant way. It is important for us to be aware of the impact of demographics like race, culture, class, gender, disability, sexual orientation, etcetera. But we need to think about those things in a broader context than just simply demographics. And so we need to make sure that the fundamental practices that we have on our campuses, especially in the classroom and out of class learning reflect our awareness of this aspect of diversity. >> Cooper: There's so much to cover, but let's start talking about some of the issues that you've written about over the years under this kind of general rubric of diversity. You've written about the impact of learning styles of students and learning styles of teachers, and how that might play a role here. Could you talk a little bit about that? >> Anderson: Sure. First I'll just start with a very simple, conceptual difference, and that is thinking about classroom instruction as either being student-centered or content-centered. Content-centered instruction tends to focus on exactly what it sounds like, the content, the discipline, and not so much on how it's delivered, nor on the characteristics of the learner. Student- centered instruction, or learner-centered instruction, in fact, does the opposite. It begins with the premise that in order for content to be delivered well, we must account for things that the learner brings into this setting. A definition of a learning style might be the preferred manner in which individuals organize and utilize information to make sense of the world, to learn, etcetera. So in that context, part of our task is to make sure that we take academic content and translate it in a way that meets the needs of learners, focuses on how they process information, but still assumes that we're emphasizing high quality content. I think one of the illusions among those who aren't student-centered is that if I become student-centered or learner- centered, somehow I’m watering down the delivery of my content, and in fact I don't know of a model of effective teaching that doesn't address the learner. So in fact, becoming more aware of student learning styles, especially when the population is very diverse because diverse populations bring diverse learning styles, is important for instructors to know. >> Cooper: Is there theoretical or research support for the kinds of things you're talking about? >> Anderson: Yes it is. And in fact if you look at the research on learning styles, you'll see that early on the focus was on general differences, that is students who were visual versus verbal learners, students who were sequential versus global, and that's still important to know. Sequential learners for example, rely heavily on rote memory. They want facts delivered in a sequential way. They don't like to make conceptual leaps as they're learning the information. That's important to know. But what we have since learned is that there are also populations that emphasize the affective dimension of learning. That is they focus on evaluating information from a personal subjective standpoint. So let's take two students in a science class. One student's very analytical. They don't make any affective judgments about the material. They just learn it. A student who emphasizes the affective dimension of learning might want to know more about how chemistry is applied in a real world setting because that has more personal relevance for them. So they have the same interest in learning the content as another student, but they are motivated more when they see the practical application of a personal relevance of information as it's presented to them. And so in that case, an instructor would benefit from being able to think of multiple examples that range from the analytical to the practical, and present to the class because he or she recognizes that there are diverse learners in that class. >> Cooper: This is self-serving from my perspective since I've committed the last twenty-five years of my life to active learning styles and cooperative and collaborative learning. But it sounds like one of the things that you're talking about with a student centered approach is to perhaps not just totally lecture on a content area, particularly classes like ours at Dominguez which are quite often two hour and forty-five minute classes, but to break the classes down, and maybe every twenty minutes do a think pair share, or maybe do some cooperative, collaborative learning. Are those some of the specific things that you would be recommending, as opposed to just a straight lecture approach? >> Anderson: Absolutely. I think the research, the best models, and the best practices now are pointing to small group dynamic engagements. This can occur even when we have large lecture classes. When I was at North Carolina State University, a physics professor there, Bob Beaker, taught large lecture classes in the beginning physics class, but he used a technique called scale up, which allowed him to also utilize small dynamic workgroups that allowed the students to engage in reflective thinking, etcetera. In fact if you just go to NC State's website and under search put in “scale up,” you can take a look at how he does that. So I think that if we think more about utilizing learning communities, if we think more about dynamic workgroups and cooperative groups, etcetera, then we will find that we can promote the success of students, even students who come in less prepared, better than if we don't use those things. The didactic linear sage on stage model has never ever, ever been recognized as effective teaching. It was simply good because we often had a homogenous select group of students in our classes that could adapt to that well. But once we became more diverse, once we opened up more to different populations, we began to learn that we needed to do more. >> Cooper: So the traditional lecture and sort of grading on the curve was a kind of a weeding out mentality, try to get rid of the students that we as professors felt weren't adequate to our high standards. And you're talking about a more inclusive active learning approach, maybe based on some master learning ideas where we try to get as many students to achieve at a high level. We're gonna ask you later on to talk about some resources in this field, and certainly from a personal perspective Eric Mazur’s work at Harvard in physics deals with some of the same issues as your colleague at North Carolina State, and Yuri Triesman’s work in Calculus reform at Berkeley basically all come around to this idea of active learning, getting students engaged with each other in class and out of class. And so, okay well let's move on to another sort of variable that is of interest and that you've talked about. You talk about teacher characteristics playing a significant role in the teaching and learning process. What exactly do you mean by that? >> Anderson: Well all of us who instruct in the classroom bring a preferred instructional style or teaching style, and that usually reflects our own preferred learning style. If for example, you or I are analytical learners, chances are we will be analytical instructors. That teaching style was influenced by the training we received, sometimes it's influenced by the nature of the discipline. Those disciplines that focus a lot on abstract course content, you tend to find more instructors teach in an analytical way. What we ask through our faculty development efforts, and what we ask as we develop new models of effective instruction, is for instructors to think about broadening aspects of their teaching style, to think again in a student-centered way, and then to be willing to engage in the activities that might expand what they do in the classroom. There's no such thing as a bad teaching style. Certain teaching styles are appropriate for students with certain learning styles, and that match may work. The problem is when you have a situation where you have students who bring varied learning styles into a class, and an instructor only wants to utilize one particular teaching style that may not be appropriate for that group. Okay, so I don't talk about inappropriate versus appropriate in a negative way, I talk about it more in a functional, practical way. >> Cooper: So if you have sort of a wide array of teaching procedures that you can bring to bear, that's better than... >> Anderson: Sure. >> Cooper: if you just have the lecture method. >> Anderson: And you know what? It works for any level of student. If you produce a sense of community in your class that works for high level students, mid level students, students who might be a little at risk, etcetera, sense of community works in any setting. And so if we can think about ways to do that, to structure our classes better, develop more community, develop more active learning, we will find that across the board it works. >> Cooper: And I think we folks in higher ed, particularly the professor that focused so much on the cognitive side of learning, that we've kind of forgotten about the affect or sort of emotional side. And if you develop bonds of students within groups and across learning communities, that can play a huge role in students' success, perhaps particularly with students who might be more inclined to drop out. If they have a sense that someone cares whether they come to campus on Tuesday, whether it be a teacher or a student, that's got to have an impact on student retention. You've also, one of the hats you've worn over the years has dealt with assessment and institutional research. Can you talk about the importance of assessment in individual courses, and perhaps also institutionally in developing the kind of learner-centered campus that you've been writing about? >> Anderson: Sure. As an instructor, I'll speak personally here. I want to know that I'm having an impact on learning. I want to know that students really are learning the content the way that I want them to learn, and the way that will benefit them in future courses, and develop competencies. Well the only way I will know that is if I periodically assess learning. Again, one of the illusions for many instructors, especially at the college level, is that they are able to do that through a traditional test. An attrition test is not a mode of assessment that allows you to gauge whether learning is occurring. A traditional test tells you whether or not they understand the content, okay? And so we need to invest more in classroom assessment, we need to think more creatively about how we can identify whether learning is occurring, we need to have students evaluate each other more in terms of peer assessment, and give an instructor feedback that way. That level of classroom assessment becomes part and parcel of a broader institutional commitment to assessment. You could start off for example by having faculty develop a common language about learning outcomes, or about objectives and how to write them, and what they might mean. You could have a faculty commit to something like inquiry guided learning or reflective learning, come together across disciplines, and have discussions where they share a common language, but simply use different examples for different disciplines. And actually what you will find is when the scientists sit down with liberal arts folks and each talks about how they examine reflective learning, that each learns more than if they sat down with their own colleagues, because we get to see how it happens differently. An institutional commitment to assessment also means that we're willing to put resources behind what we say we're going to do. The assessment is not something that you can address periodically, it has to have sustainability. And it tells us if we're on the right track, it tells us how to invest our resources, we link it to planning and budgeting, etcetera, and there's a trickle down into the classroom. But there's also an integrated model that has a feedback loop that goes up to the top of the leadership. It even tells us how we should make good evidence based decisions. >> Cooper: And that might be even more important when we're downsizing in many of our campuses, when we're giving money back we have to consolidate programs. You're suggesting that we need sort of evidence that programs are working before we put money behind it, and perhaps there's some programs that are less functional, then we have to make some hard decisions about where we're gonna put resources. >> Anderson: Absolutely. The more precarious an institutional situation because of enrollment or resources, etcetera, the more we need to ensure that the decisions we make and the resource investments we make are wise choices. >> Cooper: And in terms of course assessment, what I'm hearing you say is the kind of classroom assessment techniques that our friend Tom Angelo talks about would be useful for instructors maybe stopping class after twenty minutes and presenting a short problem that people talk about, or a minute paper at the end of class where students say this is what I understood in the class and this is what I found difficult. It sounds like you're very evidence driven in terms of both your individual teaching and in institutional planning issues. >> Anderson: Yes I am. And I guess part of that is because as I've moved from just being a classroom instructor to now being a senior administrator, there's a sense of accountability that I know I have to exhibit to all constituencies on my campus. >> Cooper: Dominguez Hills has a large Black and Hispanic population, I think we're about seventy-two percent a minority. Many of our students are first generation college goers, and we have a large commuter campus, very few folks living on campus. Can you talk about some of the challenges and opportunities that are presented in addressing the needs of these kinds of students? And as part of that maybe you could talk about some campuses that have been sort of successful in serving these students. >> Anderson: Sure. We know that many of these populations are students who really don't understand the culture of college, okay? Something probably you and I did when we were in college, just because that was the normative behavior coming to college. We're now talking about populations who may have to work, who have stressors occurring in their family or in their environment, etcetera, and yet who do have some motivation to want to succeed, they're just not crystal clear on the steps they need. Therefore, as soon as we engage them in our institutions, we need to introduce them to our expectations about the academic rigors of coming to college, what that really means. We need to arm them with the tools that they need, so advising becomes important. Because if you advise students into classes for which they aren't prepared, then we almost assure that they aren't going to have the success, and why would we do that? That's poor advising. So every institution needs to have a strong intrusive model of advising. If we have commuter campuses we need to offer virtual advising, because our students physically aren't on campus as much as someone who's residential. And virtual advising is relatively cheap to do. And at the institutions who have bought into it, it's been very successful. We need to make sure that our most effective instructors are present in the beginning courses, the gateway courses that often cause difficulty for students. That's usually some science course like physics, chemistry, or biology, it's the math course, it may be psychology, it may be composition, etcetera. But we want to make sure they get off to a good start, and so having our most effective instructors in those courses is important. We need to reward those who are more committed to wanting to make these populations succeed, that is who are willing to go the extra mile in terms of program development, in terms of mentoring, in terms of developing student success models, etcetera. We should not reward effective teaching equally with poor teaching. There's no reason why we should have high failure rates in one of these gateway courses semester after semester after semester when we have best research, best models, and best practices that tell us what to do to overcome that. For example, let's take a group that does not succeed well in math, and that's minority males. Black and Hispanic males nationally tend to perform poorly in math. Yet if you go to the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, you will find a math model that is now not only producing success at the undergraduate level that's turning out PhDs in math, okay in those populations, well what is that they've learned that other institutions haven't learned? And what commitment are they making that other institutions aren't making? Xavier University in New Orleans has a pre- professional training program called SOAR, which stands for Stress on Analytical Reasoning. They have one of the highest success rates of sending African American students to medical school, dental school, and then other professional schools. Georgia Perimeter College has a specific program for African American males that's very successful, as does the University of Cincinnati. Perhaps one of the best examples where evidence is absolutely clear is the National Hispanic Institute out of San Marcos, Texas. Now they focus on high school students, but if you look at the success rate of Hispanic students, they focus on leadership a lot too, but ninety, they've served over sixty thousand students, ninety percent of those students have gotten four year degrees, and sixty-five percent of that ninety percent have gone on for graduate degrees or professional degrees. It is probably the most outstanding statistic I know of that's pure evidence that when you really commit to a model that works, and in this case this is a focus on Hispanic students, that that model becomes successful. >> Cooper: Sometimes in higher ed we have a tradition of rewarding our senior faculty to teach fifteen person seminars of seniors, and we'll put our lecturers and our adjunct faculty in these large gate keeper classes. So it sounds to me like you're saying we need to frontload those classes with our best folks, and reward the people who are teaching the gate keeper classes in math and writing and so on. I guess that would also extend to the so called freshman success scores which most folks are starting to offer at least, where we teach some of these college skills that these under prepared students may need. >> Anderson: Can I just comment on the freshman success course? >> Cooper: Yeah, please, please, yeah. >> Anderson: Freshman success courses vary around the country. I mean we do know that if we do anything... >> Cooper: Right. >> Anderson: in the freshman year it'll tend to work better if we do nothing. >> Cooper: Sure. >> Anderson: But some freshman success courses try to do too much. They'll try to cover ten, eleven topics in a fourteen week semester. You don't need to do that. You need to pick the five or six areas that you think you can have the most impact, and do a concentrated focus on those. >> Cooper: Yeah, I used the term big ideas. We need to focus on a limited number of big ideas, and then really do a good job on those things. And I think that's true for teaching in general. I mean the biology textbooks now are a thousand pages for a semester. >> Anderson: Yeah. >> Cooper: You can't possibly cover all that. So you need to think of some fundamental things and really bring the students to a high level of skill with regard to that limited content. Okay, well let's move to a somewhat broader context. I think you suggested some things that maybe college administrators can do to meet these challenges and opportunities that we've been talking about. Can you talk a little bit more about the role of deans and provosts and presidents, and kind of fostering this student-centered campus? >> Anderson: Sure. In the book that you mentioned that will be coming out this year, I spend an entire chapter focusing on the responsibility and accountability of academic leaders, because I think they clearly are the group that will make these efforts rise and fall. I also think that they are confronted sometimes with campus politics. They are confronted with a history and chronology at the institution that sometimes hamstrings them in their efforts. And that's why they need to come together collectively to support one another. But administrative leadership has to be transformational. It has to change the culture, especially at a place like Dominguez Hills. And that's because the student population has changed. That's because you can't rely as much on state funding any more. You have to go out and raise more money for many of your initiatives and you have to have everyone involved in that process. I mean I've involved significantly in fund raising at the University at Albany, but I also was at North Carolina State and Texas A&M, because we recognized that we have to take on more responsibility in that area. We also have to review our policies, our structures, and to look at any areas that seem to serve as barricades to these students' success. Now I visit campuses where on paper I see things written very nicely about what the institution intends to do, but in fact when you look at the actual application of these processes and mechanisms, they're not occurring. And even if they're occurring, they're not assessed, so again you don't know if they're working or not. So we have available to us best models, best practices, best research, Sternberg's work on multiple intelligence, Sedlacek’s work on non-cognitive factors. All of these are important things for especially very diverse populations. And so we need to make a commitment as administrative leaders to the things that are going to work. Stop doing things that don't work. Stop putting money into areas where we can't prove they're having any success. It doesn't matter how long they've been running. I mean you can have a program that's been around fifteen years, if we can't demonstrate it's been successful or had an impact, it needs to go. We need to put those resources in areas where we know we can produce successes. >> Cooper: And again, particularly important to do in times when economics are not good, enrollments are not good. >> Anderson: Absolutely. >> Cooper: So you're suggesting that our leaders need to have the courage to kind of make difficult decisions, knowing that sometimes it's gonna be unpopular. But if those decisions are driven by evidence, by data, then kind of will help in that process. >> Anderson: And this is a very competitive environment, where if we don't keep pace with the institutions who are doing that, we keep falling further and further and further behind. You know, Cal State Dominguez Hills should decide it wants to be the benchmark in undergraduate education for example, among CSU schools. That is you do things that they copy. They come to you because your excellence is at such a level that they want to do more things the way you do them. Now if you think that way, and everyone at the institution thinks that way, you will find more people committed to doing the things we're talking about. So we set our own internal benchmarks for what we want to accomplish. For example we want more students to be successful in the beginning chemistry course. You set an internal benchmark for that, and then you decide how you're gonna do it. And then ultimately you develop a chemistry model that everyone in the CSU system wants to copy. But again, your administrative leadership has to think in a transformative way to change the culture to want to do that. >> Cooper: So just as with our classes, we have to sort of identify a few things that we do very well and get everybody behind those things. So the institution needs to sort of develop a sense of identity from the top down and from the bottom up, and really get behind those things as opposed to trying to do forty three different things. >> Anderson: Absolutely, absolutely. >> Cooper: We've talked about a sort of broad array of issues, both institutionally and in terms of classroom practice. For folks interested in finding out more about the classroom practices issue, and the sort of institutional issues we've been talking about, can you talk about some books or websites, or periodicals or resources that folks might want to take a look at? I guess one of the things will be this book that's coming out in November I think that you've written. But can you talk about some other resources that some folks might take a look at? >> Anderson: Sure. Laura Rendon, who used to be at Cal State Long Beach had a book about two years ago called “Students of Color in Their First Year.” Very, very good book, that's one I recommend highly. You've made reference to the Angelo and Cross book on Classroom Assessment. That's one of my bibles personally. AAC and U, the American Association of Colleges and Universities, has the best diversity website out there: Diversity Web. >> Cooper: So if they Google'd on AAC and U? >> Anderson: Yes. And you would get their diversity web, diversity digest. It's also in hard copy. You can order it as a newsletter. But when you click on that site you will see, for example, that you can click on research or you can click on classroom instruction, or general education, or out of class learning. There's a variety of areas where they summarize, both the best research and the best practices. IUPUI, Indiana University Purdue University Indiana campus has a diversity resource guide online that's a very practical guide, not only research oriented, but again a practical tool where anyone, not just their faculty, anyone can go online to the diversity resource guide and learn a lot of the strategic ways that we're talking about to produce success. And then there's some old standards, Astin's book on What Matters in College, again probably one of the best things done that offers a lot of insight. So the tools are there for us, you know, the information is there for us. And that's why it's good to develop a strong website that comes out of faculty development, or comes out of some academic related area that becomes the working blueprint for faculty on campus. >> Cooper: You spoke of faculty development, we really haven't talked too much about that, and we're coming near to the end of our time together. Before I find out if you have any closing remarks, could you talk a little bit about the role of faculty development in developing this kind of student-centered or learner-centered campus that you've been talking about? >> Anderson: Yeah. On most campuses faculty development is neither staffed, nor does it receive the resources that it should. And that's kind of difficult for me to understand, because if we're in the business of educating students and maximizing the quality of that education, why would we not want to assure that our faculty and our instructors have available to them the tools that will promote that outcome? So, I never really understood. I understand for political reasons, but I haven't understood for practical reasons why faculty development has been underserved by administrative leaders. If you look at the institutions that tend to be models, that tend to be highly effective, you will find generally that their teaching centers or their faculty development efforts are very strong. So there's a significant correlation. If you look at the institutions that have terrible four year graduate rates, or where diverse students are not successful, you can also find a correlation with a very, very weak faculty development effort, and other academic supports are very weak. So it's clear that if we choose to commit to a stronger model, we have to also decide to commit to the few areas that will strengthen that commitment for us. And again, it's a decision, it's a political decision, and it's a practical decision that administrative leaders have to make. Now that may mean that we have to reallocate resources away from something that's not working or that's window dressing, and we have to be willing to do that. >> Cooper: But there's good reason to do it economically as well as because it's the right thing. >> Anderson: That's right. >> Cooper: If we teach the right way, we're gonna retain students. >> Anderson: That's right. >> Cooper: And each student that's retained depending on the college could be five to thirty thousand dollars. And multiply that by fifty additional students per year, it seems to me to make good economic sense as well as being the right thing to do. >> Anderson: It does. And we can't have people walking the campus wishing they had a different kind of student, right? >> Cooper: Right. Good point. >> Anderson: You know, this isn't the U Cal system. This is the Cal State system. And the Cal State system has had to change their response to the student enrollments that have become more diverse, sometimes not as well prepared, etcetera, and we just recognize that. Wishing we had a different kind of student isn't gonna happen, The pool in your particular demographic region is not gonna get smarter overnight or come in with higher SATs and ACTs etcetera, okay? So any time I hear a faculty member victim blame students, I never understand that. I just think someone is engaging in denial. You know, we have to just face the reality of who comes to our campuses, what we have to do, etcetera. And that's on both ends. That means that the strong students we have to help get stronger and become more competitive to go on to professional programs or go on to graduate school, but by the same token we have to put as much energy into the other end of the continuum, the students who come in less prepared. >> Cooper: Okay. Well as I say, we're close to the end of our time together. But I want to give you an opportunity to sort of address any issues that we haven't talked about before we finish. >> Anderson: Well I did mention the word accountability I guess periodically throughout my responses. But I want to place a special emphasis on accountability. Accountability for academic and administrative leadership, accountability because in our mission and in our vision we say that our responsibility is to students and to learners, and so we need to be accountable relative to that. We need to be accountable to the citizens of the state because we are preparing the future leaders. If we don't do it, then who’s going to do it? I mean this is the environment where students have a chance to think reflectively, to ask and answer questions, to experiment with life, and we have to create the kind of intellectual agendas that challenge them, that make them more responsible, etcetera. And we can't abdicate that responsibility. >> Cooper: Dr. James A. Anderson, thank you for being with us. >> Anderson: Thank you, appreciate the invitation.