Angela Duckworth says that “grit is living life like it is a marathon not a sprint” (TED, 2013). When I reflect back over the past several courses in this program, it is interesting to see how my perspectives have changed (or haven’t changed) in such a short period of time. The last time I looked […]
Category: EDLD 5313
The Nitty-Gritty About Grit and Basic Instincts
When I reflect back over the past several courses in this program, it is interesting to see how my perspectives have changed (or haven’t changed) in such a short period of time. The last time I looked at Carol Dweck’s (2008) book Mindset, I had to look hard at myself in the mirror and realize […]
Understanding by Design
Several years ago, when I first started working at Baylor, I went through all the normal new-employee orientation and training courses from HR. While doing that, I learned about Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The second habit Covey (1990) discusses is “begin with the end in mind.” This simple idea helps […]
Bright Lights of Innovation
In the video comparing a 20th century to a 21st century education (21stEducator, 2009), we saw a giant dichotomy of learning and teaching styles. Of all the adjectives used to contrast the 20th century from the 21st century, the most basic which encompasses all of the others were “passive” and “active.” In the 20th century […]
3 Column Table Course Map
As a systems administrator for a large, higher education, institution, I have a unique opportunity to not only provide access to academic systems and services for faculty, but I also have the ability to interact with faculty interested in learning more about these online tools and resources. Although I am not in a traditional classroom […]
Connect the Dots
The big hairy audacious goals (BHAG) concept this week is ironically something that I hear about on a semi-regular basis. I work with a small group of instructional designers who are always talking about backwards design and encouraging faculty to build the assignments and assessments from the learning objectives, and then have those learning objectives […]
Learning Philosophy – Connected Constructivism
When I started my higher education experience in the mid-1990’s, I was introduced to a wide variety of learning theorists and cognitive psychologists from Jerome Bruner, B.F. Skinner, Jean Piaget, and Erik Erikson to Lev Vygotsky, Benjamin Bloom, and Robert Mills Gagné. Through their own approaches and methods, each of these scientists and scholars were […]
Total Systems Failure
As I watched Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk again this week, I picked up on a few points that he made that I overlooked previously. Specifically, he classified the current educational system as a crisis equivalent to that of the climate crisis “which is as severe, which has the same origins, and that we have […]
Creating Significant Learning Environments
The mission statement of my institution, Baylor University, is “to educate men and women for worldwide leadership and service by integrating academic excellence and Christian commitment within a caring community” (Mission Statement, n.d.). Although, “to educate” seems like an action verb in which instructors are doing something to the students to force learning, the “by […]
Understanding Context
The opening statement in Dr. Tony Bates’ (ChangSchool, 2015) video about building effective learning environments was, “[the learning environment] is the total context in which students are working.” The basic idea is that education or learning isn’t something that is done to someone despite that being how most school systems are designed. Real learning occurs […]