Close encounters

The university in which I work, Carlos III University of Madrid, has decided to deploy the new degrees fully adapted to the Bologna Declaration the upcoming course. This might seem as a minor fact unless you've spent some time as teaching staff in a University. Changes are very delicate, and if the change involves degrees, schedules, number of groups, calendar, methodology, etc. then we are clearly facing a huge challenge. This transition will be a matter of a later post, but I'd like to comment on something derived from this situation.

Due to the need to adapt quickly to teaching methodology which is "student centered" instead of "professor centered" there has been a few talks and courses at the University. A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of sitting in this talk by Miguel Valero a professor of engineering at a school in the Barcelona Area. Interestingly enough, I sat on one of his classes when I was in college. It was back on 1987, and both of us went a long way so as our paths crossed again. The topic of the talk was how to adapt engineering courses to a collaborative teaching methodology.

I exchanged a few remarks with him, and one of them was along the lines of how this type of activity, that is, studying how to better teach concepts, involve students, etc. is considered as a second class research. Leaving that feeling aside, I asked him for interesting references, and he mentioned Richard Felder. I know about the work of Richard Felder at least since 2000. Heck, I even started this blog with a post on how the Felder test was run in one of my classes. Bit it was not until Miguel Valero pointed to him as the source for teaching techniques that I started to pay close attention to his work.

Luckily (and is an example for the rest of the scientific community) Prof. Felder keeps a very organized and exhaustive list of publications on his web page. I started to read some of his work and I must say that I now understand the expression drinking from a fire hose. His studies are, in my opinion, very well sustained in empirical evidence, which is so hard to obtain in the area of instructional technology.

But the thing that impressed me the most are what he calls his strong opinions. After reading some of his pieces in Random Thoughts, I came to the conclusion that I also have strong opinions similar to those ones. Most of them I keep to myself because I consider it would be rude to air them. Some other, I've made visible in some occasions and were not received with enthusiasm. The shift toward student centered learning is something long overdue. I cannot believe how teaching staff lives so comfortable in the state of minimum energy of grabbing the 5, 10, 15 year old slides and put students through a slow process of (as Felder would say) Death by Powerpoint.

This transition to the Bologna Declaration seems to try to achieve once and for all a change on this mentality which is clearly obsolete and is putting universities and students light years apart by the second. Yes, I think is good to have collaborative sessions, I know you are supposed to do that with the same staff, but it is still good for the students. Yes, you have to keep the attention of students in 90 min. sessions instead of the old 50+50mins. But, hey, it's simple, its YOUR JOB! And yes, you have to motivate the students, is it difficult? Yup. Is it becoming more and more challenging? Yup. Do you have to multiplex these problems with your particular take at Publish or Perish? Right again. But again, these are the rules of the game. All these problems are the basic premises to work with. And if you are not part of the solution..., you are part of the problem.