Mr. Messy is a friend of my kid Mac, who for some reason is intrigued by Mr. Messy. We haven’t even read the book (so in fact I don’t know what it’s about), but we have seen his picture and sometimes it looks to Mac like Mr. Messy is:

a) wrapped up in pink silly putty, or

b) covered in strawberry jam, or

c) “like a flower with arms and feet!”

All of these scenarios might sound pretty neat if you are 3 — eh, hem, I mean 3 and 1/2 — years old.

For us grown-ups, though, messy may not be as fun. Messy means things are not simple, clean, or clear. Messy means being able to live in ambiguity (per my mother’s motto: “We’ll see…”). Messy means that emotions can be involved, that learning is tough, that life is sometimes challenging, that the world can be a difficult place. And as such, messy also provides opportunities. Learning to deal with messy means we get to problem-solve, think differently, find a way, and figure out how to navigate the rough and tumble seas, and then celebrate arrival to dry land and reflect on what worked and what didn’t.

Without messy, we’d likely be bored. And without messy we probably wouldn’t learn much.

To celebrate messy, let me share another goodie from The Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal,by Parker Palmer and Arthur Zajonc:

If higher education cannot deal with the messiness of real life, educated people will not be prepared to use their knowledge amid the complexities and the cruelties that constantly threaten to undo civilization. And they clearly will not know how to use their knowledge with wisdom, compassion, and love. . . If higher education does not help people learn how and why to take the risks of love, its moral contributions to the world will fall short of its potential. (pgs. 38-39)

I like the idea of addressing messy with love because love represents embracing something fully and being devoted and caring. Dean Dad recently suggested that we should “tolerate” ambiguity by reframing it, and he has a great point in asking us to consider this:

Which sounds better: uncertainty or possibility? Failure or learning experience? Internal politics or growing pains?

Um, that’s easy: Possibility, learning experience, and growing pains, please!

Ultimately, for us folks who work and learn in higher education (hopefully there’s overlap there, right?), I think that love — in the way my kid seems to love Mr. Messy — is likely more sustainable and impactful than tolerance. To me, tolerance means I put up with something that might bother me (e.g., I tolerate my husband’s inherent need to reload the dishwasher after I’ve loaded it); love, though, means we can embrace the messy and, as Dean Dad proposes, work to make a difference.

My kid loves Mr. Messy.

And I am trying to, too. Even when he’s covered in strawberry jam (or in this case, nutella).

Meet Mr. Messy: Loving ambiguity one waffle at a time.

]]> http://prattlenog.com/2011/10/06/mr-messy-meets-higher-education/feed/ 0 melaniebooth messy nutella http://prattlenog.com/2011/04/01/the-bottom-line/ http://prattlenog.com/2011/04/01/the-bottom-line/#comments Fri, 01 Apr 2011 19:27:19 +0000 melaniebooth http://prattlenog.com/?p=2774 ]]> I’m happily working my way through the reading assignments for the WASC Assessment Leadership Academy that I am participating in (and finding all sorts of goodies to share with my colleagues), and this paragraph from Mary J. Allen’s book Assessing Academic Programs in Higher Education (2004) reminded me why I care so much about assessment — because it’s (once again) about informing teaching and learning:

Earlier teaching models, primarily based on delivering content through textbooks and lecturing, assumed that students learn through listening, reading, and independent work. Typical grading practices, based on grading on a curve, frequently put students into competition with each other, discouraging student collaboration. More recent conceptions of learning stress that students construct knowledge by integrating new learning into what they already know. Learning is viewed as a cognitive and social process in which students construct meaning through reflection and through their interactions with faculty, fellow students, and others. This approach involves expanded use of active learning pedagogies, such as collaborative and cooperative learning, problem-based learning, and community service learning. Our ability to meet the educational needs of our diverse student body depends on developing an expanded repertoire of pedagogical strategies with demonstrated effectiveness, and assessment helps us identify these strategies. (p. 3)

And then (as if that wasn’t enough of a Rah! Rah! for educators), Allen identifies the bottom line:

The bottom line for assessment is student learning (p. 6) . . . . Just as the bottom line in business is the generation of profit, the bottom line in higher education is the generation of learning. (p.19)

Generating learning. That’s a really great bottom line.

Apparently there’s now an app for critical thinking! Read all about it here:

Critical Thinking: There’s An App For That

Ditch your Liberal Arts education – who needs it?  And hey – you no longer need to engage in dialogue or reflection with others — what a waste of your time! And reading, writing, and learning math? Nah – don’t bother!  And learning about ethical frameworks? Or what it means to be human? Or science, art, music, history, literature, sociology, etc? Money down the drain, I say. Just download this app and soon you’ll be able to think your way out of a paper bag! As it promises:

The ‘Think-O-Meter’  app challenges your thinking and helps you develop a Sherlock Holmes-like attention to the evidence at hand. Think through dozens of scenarios and test your ability to separate reliable facts from assumptions, focus on the relevant information, and think critically to get the right answer.

Wait. . .

WAIT!

The “right” answer??? What does this mean, the “right” answer?

Hmmm … it must not work very well. Not many people I know who think critically would claim there is a “right” answer to many problems. They might even go so far as to frame different questions, or pose new scenarios.  Or at least say, “You know what? I think that’s an ill-formed problem. Let’s consider a different way of approaching it.”

Wow. Total bummer! I guess the developers of the Think-O-Meter need to think again. Too bad there’s not an app for that!

Denial vs. Progress - Indexed

Now how do I get my 3-year old to buy into it too?

Airport Tantrum: "NO! I don't want to go home!"

Thanks to Indexed – again!!! – for the brilliance!

Clear Path, by Harriet Schwartz

We often spend so much time coping with problems along our path that we forget why we are on that path in the first place. The result is that we only have a dim, or even inaccurate, view of what’s really important to us. ~Peter Senge

May the end of the year bring you back to your path, and may you find cause to celebrate each step along the way.

__________________________________

With gratitude to my colleague Harriet Schwartz, who took the picture above – this and several others can be purchased on her website: Harriet Schwartz Photography.

Rotting and rolling, from Indexed.

Today I get to share another nifty view of learning from Indexed. This is yet another reason why I like working with adult learners — they are experienced and, often, curious.

Pop Quiz: How do you get from Point A to Point B?

Answer: HERE

YIPPEE HELEN!!!

Helen is a Human Studies major, and she earned credit through the PLA program for the following courses:

• Introduction to Photography
• Mushroom Identification and Taxonomy
• Anasazi Archeology
• Conflict Management
• Effective Listening
• Psychology of Loss and Grief

Three of these topics were grounded in her hobbies and avocations (she has some great mushroom recipes and some amazing photographs!); all were deeply informed by her LIFE experience.

Helen talks about her experiences with PLA and tips for PLA students here:

Last night I had the honor of attending the lecture of Mary Catherine Bateson, a lovely event orchestrated by Dr. Jenny Sasser. Students, alumni, community guests, faculty, and staff filled Flavia Salon to hear Bateson speak about her experiences and perspectives, her books, and her ideas about the importance of engaging and supporting elders in our society.  Oh – and an organization she founded, GrannyVoter.org

Bateson’s ideas truly resonated with Marylhurst’s mission of providing access to learning for adults (as she herself pointed out – in fact, she had studied us!). Though I hate to just provide sound-bites and take such lovely ideas out of the significant contexts in which they were presented, she did say some really neat things, including:

• “Experience is the best teacher – but only if you do your homework.”
• “We are not what we know, but what we are willing to learn.”
• “I’m still me. I’m the person I’ve been becoming my whole life.”

I was reminded once again about the very special work we get to do each day here, together, and I can’t stop thinking about it. Thank you, thank you, Jenny, for your work in bringing her here – I am grateful for the gift, and I hope she can come back soon!
~Melanie

PS, Readers: For a good sense of Bateson’s work and what we experienced last night with her, check out some posts from her blog, such as Learning to teach, Teaching to learn

• Attention: What are the new ways that we pay attention in a digital era? How do we need to change our concepts and practices of attention for a new era? How do we learn and practice new forms of attention in a digital age?
• Participation: How do we encourage meaningful interaction and participation in a digital age? How can the internet be useful on a cultural, social, or civic level?
• Collaboration: Collaboration can simply reconfirm consensus, acting more as peer pressure than a lever to truly original thinking. HASTAC has cultivated the methodology of collaboration by difference to inspire meaningful ways of working together.
• Network awareness: How can we both thrive as creative individuals and understand our contribution within a network of others? How do you gain a sense of what that extended network is and what it can do?
• Global Consciousness: How does the World Wide Web change our responsibilities in and to the world we live in?
• Design: How is information conveyed differently, effectively, and beautifully in diverse digital forms? Aesthetics form a key part of digital communication. How do we understand and practice the elements of good design as part of our communication and interactive practices?
• Narrative, Storytelling: How do narrative elements shape the information we wish to convey, helping it to have force in a world of competing information?
• Procedural (Game) Literacy: What are the new tactics and strategies of interactive games, where the multimedia narrative forms changes because of our success or failure? How can we use game mechanics for learning and for motivation in our lives?
• Critical consumption of information: Without a filter (editors, experts, and professionals), much information on the internet can be inaccurate, deceptive, or inadequate. How do we learn to be critical? What are the standards of credibility?
• Digital Divides, Digital Participation: What divisions still remain in digital culture? Who is included and who excluded? How do basic aspects of economics and culture dictate not only who participates in the digital age but how they participate?
• Ethics: What are the new moral imperatives of our interconnected age?
• Assessment: What are the best, most fluid, most adaptive and helpful ways to measure progress and productivity, not as fixed goals, but as a part of a productive process that also requires innovation and creativity?
• Preservation: What are the requirements for preserving the digital world we are creating? Paper lasts. Platforms change.
• Sustainability: What are the metrics for sustainability in a world where we live on more kilowatts than ever before? How do we protect the environment in a plugged-in era?
• Learning, Unlearning, and Relearning: Alvin Toffler has said that, in the rapidly changing world of the twenty-first century, the most important skill anyone can have is the ability to stop in ones tracks, see what isn’t working, and then find ways to unlearn old patterns and relearn how to learn. How is this process especially important in our rapidly changing digital world?

It is perhaps the last one that applies to our PLA work the most, as the critical reflection process in PLA causes us to ask what do we need to unlearn / relearn / learn?

Thanks to Jonas B. on Flickr for making this image available for reuse.

I believe that in my teaching I address other literacies represented on this list as well though, namely participation, collaboration, narrative, critical consumption of information, and of course, the heart of it all,  assessment. Though I do not necessarily view them in the way that Davidson is proposing — from a “digital world” point of view — I contend that they represent qualities of mind, an ethos, if you will, that transcends delivery / platform / media.

I like the list a lot, and I plan to use it as a map for the critically reflective journey I am about to embark on with my students. And, in the spirit of the list and in the spirit of being a co-learner, I will try to be clear with myself about my own areas to learn, unlearn and relearn as  well.

(Or Any Other Individuals Seeking To Learn From Their Mistakes Experiences)

Read the 16 Outcomes of Reflection. It’s a GREAT framework for reflecting!

Then:

1. Think Back – about your topic / your experience / your learning.
2. Think Forward – about your topic / your experience / your learning.
3. Think Inward – about your topic / your experience / your learning.
4. Think Outward – about your topic / your experience / your learning.

"Unstandardized" from Indexed

And write — back. forward. inward. outward. — about your topic / your experience / your learning.

And remember that sometimes to write IS to think. Strike that.

And remember that ALL of the time, to write is to think.