Day 25: Building Conversation, Getting Out of the Video Game Mentality

What does ideal collaboration between students look like?

I love how the questions are getting more and more thought-provoking as the Reflective Teaching Challenge continues. I'm having to consider aspects of my teaching that I don't normally think of deeply (and learning from my K-12 digital colleagues!).

Collaboration is definitely something I use, but I don't often put it under the microscope: I consider it when I'm thinking of the content (i.e., using quotations/sources well, writing an effective intro) and using it as a mode of delivery. But how do I make the actual collaboration better?

Something I'm trying to work on is getting collaboration beyond just question and response. I often have students work in groups, and a typical activity might consist of students answering questions I pose, or creating questions themselves and having partners come up with the answers. I circulate and answer questions, and since most of my students are remarkably well-behaved, they get the "must-dos" done efficiently enough. But it's all very task-oriented. They want to finish and be done so they can play on their phones or talk about a TV show.

What I'd like to see is more of a genuine conversation evolving. Not just, "Oh, I read your paper, and here are a couple of paragraphs of what I think about it. Good job. I like the part about the mean landlord." I want the writer to be compelled to follow-up: "The part about the landlord was hard to write. You think it came across? Why?"

I think a lot of our students are locked in a video game mentality: play the game, get the points, down the boss, get the A.

This may be an incredibly wise strategy. College students are subject to pressures I didn't dream of when I set foot on Cuyamaca College's campus in 1999. They've got unit creep, higher GPA requirements (remember when you could transfer to a decent CSU with a 2.3?), more content to be covered, and limited services and classes due to a still-crunchy budget.

But the video game mentality leaves little room for genuine interest and curiosity in the course and subject matter. How do we stimulate that despite all the competing interests our students juggle? How do we convince them that it's worth going beyond the minimum needed to get the points? That yes, it might cost an extra energy point or two but in the long run it's worth it?

Sometimes it can happen naturally, with a good activity. The husband had a great idea in response to my complaint that students don't take the time to proofread for basic, basic typos (like "i," "collge," stuff that an MS Word editor should fix).

As a gamer, hubby reads game-related blogs and subscribes to various YouTubers. He says that when he sees viewer/reader comments, he equates the writer's clarity with intelligence.

So, the task: Give students two articles or paragraphs on the same topic, one written well and one with lots of errors, and ask who seems more credible and why.

So simple! Of course, the students pursued their critique with a vigor they rarely seem to put toward their own work. I heard shouts of, "this guy is so smart! I never would have thought of that," and "can you believe Pineapple spelled that word wrong?"

They were having a genuine conversation.

I think but don't know for sure what can break students out of the video game mentality when working together, but here are a couple of thoughts:

• Competition. People are inherently competitive--to varying degrees, of course! (Hence a love of video games.) Maybe Nietzsche and his will-to-power concept is the right one, much to my dismay. But I've noticed that when you tap into students' competitive nature, either by pitting them against each other or against a text, in this case, they are motivated from a different place than the "get the points" arena.
• Explicit goals that students buy into. We all have course objectives and student learning outcomes we are supposed to use to guide our courses. These may not make sense to students, but if we can make them palatable and relevant to a student's short-term interest, they might take it seriously. 
• Case in point: I just saw an instructor relate a rhetorical analysis activity to doing well on the WPA--the writing assessment many will take when they transfer to a four-year school. Most have transfer on the brain, at least a little bit. This put a more immediate need to really understand rhetorical strategies and how they function, as their performance on this assessment determines their place in upper-division writing.

What else works to get students really invested in collaborating, in learning? 

Lions and Camels and Nietzsche, Oh My!

"Writing is like magic because you cannot see the simple psychology you are weaving, the questions you are asking, the way you are reshaping how you interact with your world," writes Rebecca K. O'Connor, author, falconer, and blogger on The Rumpus.

I wasn't able to articulate why I haven't been able to blog lately until I read that wonderful piece of O'Connor's. Lately, I feel like I'm seeing life so clearly. In looking back over the stages when I've blogged most often--and blogged best, if I may be so bold--it was when I was mired in little tragedies I was willing to share with you all. I was desperately trying to peak behind the fabric of my experience, and writing was the fingers that allowed me to grasp. For a moment, perhaps I'm taking a break from weaving that simple psychology.

These past few months have led up to a pretty big change in my life. I made a decision that took far too long to arrive at, but the relief that swept over me after making it was so welcome I don't regret the lost time one bit. I feel now that I've been on my knees, begging for mercy, for over two years, and I finally heard a voice saying it was OK to get up. And, mind you, not one of those "Hello, E, it's schizophrenia calling" kind of voices. Something different.

Anyway, how wonderful it is to finally stand up! Nietzsche and, oddly enough, Sufi poet Rumi write that spiritual unfolding occurs in three stages: the camel, the lion, and then the child. In the camel phase, we feel we have been burdened with the suffering of our existence. We trudge onward, until finally we kneel, as a camel will, under the weight of our burdens. We surrender completely. It's only then that we can rise up like a lion, full of the strength and majesty we need to meet our challenges.

OK, I get it--it's kind of a cheesy comparison. (That's also an odd thing to say about something Nietzsche-generated.) But you know, don't we all get to feeling like we've been taking a knee from the weight of our burdens for far too damn long? Moreover, I bet we also all know what it feels like to finally set that heaviness aside and rise the fuck up. I'm feeling it now--every sleepless night, every jagged meditation session, every scalding tear, every desperate conversation with friends, every scrawl in the journal, and every sweaty yoga class--they do add up to something far bigger than the sum of their well-intentioned parts.

Ahhh. Life is good. I teach, I sweat, and I sleep. The only downside is that it doesn't provide me with much inspiration for blogging :-)

But I know from living in a dualistic universe that these things are cyclical ;-)  I'm sure the camel will be back, but for the moment, I'm sure enjoying being a lion.