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Alone in the Lab:

Student Self-Reliance and the

Principles of Accepting Responsibility and Acting for Oneself

Glenn Dayley

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Let me begin with a parable:

THE STAPLER

A certain student approaches the teacher to turn in his assignment.Student: Do you have a stapler?Teacher: Not with me. Why would I have a stapler?Student: Do you want the essays stapled?Teacher: Yes, as it says in the instructions.Student: But isn’t there a stapler here in the classroom?Teacher: I don’t know.Student: Is it all right if I turn in the essay unstapled?Teacher: I want it stapled.Student: But there isn’t a stapler.Teacher: Nope.Dazed and confused, the student wonders how life became so complicated.

This article concerns the student represented in this parable. I’m not talking about the top-tier

student, the go-getter, the active, engaged, always prepared student, the one who pushes him or

herself to learn, who pushes the teacher to teach better. I am also not talking about the bottom-

tier student, the disengaged, the disgruntled even, the uncaring, chronically unprepared, the

student who lacks even a drop of sincere desire to learn and grow. I am talking about the

middle-of-the-road students, who seem to have grown up in a system that rewards mediocrity,

that frowns at both excellence and failure, that smiles at “reasonable” effort, and that nurtures a

sense of entitlement that equates entertainment with activity and learning.

I admit, much of the time about issues that matter most in education, I find myself

uncertain. I appreciate the observation of former US Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin

(2004) that “Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything.” I cannot hope

to speak with the same admirable definitiveness of many researchers and observers of issues in

higher education generally or issues at BYU-Idaho specifically. Nevertheless, I will share my

research and observations concerning the need to encourage our students to accept greater

responsibility for their learning.

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In his inaugural response, BYU-Idaho President, Kim B. Clark, reviewed the three

imperatives which were to guide this university. The first imperative has to do with improving

“substantially the quality of every aspect of the experience our students have,” and he

specifically noted the intellectual “dimension” as needing to “increase in its quality” (2005). In

an address in October 2011, Clark again spoke of our need to improve everything we do at BYU-

Idaho, saying, “…raising substantially the quality of what we do must be paramount.” The call

to improve the quality of our students’ learning has been repeated again and again by Clark and

other leaders on campus. Faculty members can play the major role in helping students

experience the “deep learning” we want students to have while at BYU-Idaho (Clark, 2013).

As faculty, we should continually review our course designs, curriculum choices,

teaching philosophies, and teaching methods, looking for ways to progressively realize the

quality imperative. However, as an institution, we collectively seem more comfortable

discussing the other two imperatives of accommodating more students and reducing the relative

costs than of discussing the first imperative regarding quality. Our reluctance to focus on quality

may be because it is the most personal and thus the most difficult of the three to assess and

design specific steps to address. Enrollments and costs are fairly straight forward, but the quality

of a student’s learning experience is not easily quantifiable in ways that offer specific guidance

for improvement.

Students’ engagement in their own education is inextricably connected to the quality

imperative. Efforts to improve quality that do not take into account students’ self-reliance as

learners will ultimately fail. This essay introduces some areas for faculty to focus on as we seek

to raise the quality of “everything” we do on campus.

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I-LEARN AND TEACHER DEPENDENCY

For learning to take place, regardless of the mode of instruction (e.g. face-to-face, hybrid,

online), two ingredients are essential: engagement and desire. Simply having access to

curriculum is not enough. If it were, public libraries, and now the Internet, would be sufficient to

educate the world. The proponents of a MOOC-style education model make this “content and

access” argument. My limited experiences with teaching and technology make me shake my

head at the myopic eyesight of these MOOC visionaries. The percentage of students who

possess the necessary internal desire and the self-discipline to stay engaged in learning,

independently of external circumstance or influence, is very small.

The questions of engagement and desire are the questions that must be answered in any

learning situation. The dampening effect technology can have on engagement and desire should

encourage teachers to continually evaluate how they use technology and how it influences

students’ learning, for good or bad. This brings me to I-Learn or any Learning Management

System (LMS).

For all the potential benefits I-Learn offers, we need to be aware of how we may be

weakening desire and engagement in our students when I-Learn shifts from stagehand to one of

the lead actors in the educational play. A brief table may illustrate what I mean:

STUDENT ASKS STUDENT MEANSIs this on I-Learn? I don’t need to take notes or pay attention in

class.The slides and videos are on I-Learn, right? I can skip class, right?Why isn’t the gradebook updated on I-Learn? I’m not aware enough to know how I’m doing

in the class without I-Learn telling me.

These types of questions from students signal we need to help students take control of their own

learning. Though it may seem inconsequential when a student asks “Do I have to write that

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down?” it is not. Such a student is not yet a “life-long learner.” Such a student is coming from

life experiences that have taught him or her to expect to be told what the minimum effort is

required for “success” in the class. Such a student quickly learns to use the “what if calculator”

on I-Learn to plan which assignments he or she can skip or perform poorly on and still keep the

“B” he or she wants in the class.

Such a student presents the teacher with a moment for possible life-changing instruction.

If our answer to “Do I have to write that down?” is “No, it’s on I-Learn,” we may reinforce the

student’s dependency on someone or something else for his or her learning. We must work to

make I-Learn what it claims to be: a Learning Management System by using it wisely and

remembering I-Learn is made for teachers, not the other way around.

Students may also become dependent in unproductive ways to the teacher. Just as

students can learn to look to I-Learn for the quickest, easiest way to avoid the hard work of

initiative and study, they can become overly dependent on faculty in similar ways. As teachers,

how do we answer these types of questions from our students?

When is this due? Can’t you just tell me? Would you send out a reminder? Do I really have to __________? What are your office hours? Where is your office? Is this going to be on a test? How many points is this worth? What is the answer? I can’t figure this out. What should I do? Do you really want us to bring our textbooks to every class?

How we respond to such questions can indicate how well we are doing in interacting with our

students in ways that leave students more self-reliant learners.

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In winter 2013, I taught a pilot version of a competency-based Foundations of English

101 course, which turned nearly all responsibility for learning over to the students, and, frankly,

things didn’t go well. The students set their own deadlines, none of the scaffolding assignments

leading to their final essay were awarded grades or points, and students were not required to

participate in teacher-organized activities during class time. Lest I leave the impression students

were left completely adrift, I must say students received the same instructions and had access to

all the same resources for this project as students in my traditional FDENG 101. The major

difference between the competency-based course and the traditional version was the lack of

points and lack of enforced deadlines in the competency-based course.

I anticipated at least half of the students would complete the course by mid-term, and by

the end of the semester only a few students would remain in the class. I was way off. At mid-

term, no students had completed the course and no students had even submitted a first draft of

their projects. No papers came in until week nine, and then, only two. So picture this: 22

students attending class and “working” on their research papers for nine weeks before only two

students finished. In contrast, all twenty-five students in my traditional FDENG 101 course

completed their projects by week six and had begun the next of two more major assignments.

The competency-based course, obviously, was intended to allow students to demonstrate

a minimum level of competency in research and writing, and then they could be finished with the

course. As it turned out, only eight students completed the course before the end of the semester.

Two students, amazingly, attended class all semester but didn’t turn in anything. The other

twelve students submitted their final drafts in the last week of the semester.

What was the problem? The graph below shows the students’ responses to this question.

We asked the same question of the traditional class for comparison.

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0.00%

5.00%

10.00%

15.00%

20.00%

25.00%

30.00%

35.00%

40.00%

Biggest challenges to completing the essay

Competency Traditional

As the results indicate, the competency-based students’ biggest challenges related to the

two areas the course was specifically designed not to overtly help them with: 67% of the students

reported they either didn’t have the self-discipline necessary to complete the task, or, when left

on their own, they couldn’t or wouldn’t work through the writing process without graded

checkpoints along the way. The students in the traditional course struggled in these areas at a

much lower rate. Remember, both courses received the same instruction and access to resources,

but without a teacher assigning points to the scaffolding assignments, none of students in the

competency-based course successfully completed the assignment in a reasonable timeframe.

What does this tell us? For this course, the results seemed to indicate the following:

No points = no workNo deadlines = no workNo regularly occurring assessments = no work

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After week seven, I panicked because no students had submitted papers yet. In an effort to

salvage the course, I set a two-week deadline by which students had to turn in at least a rough

draft. I threatened the students with a 10% grade reduction if they failed to turn anything in.

Two weeks later a majority of the students submitted drafts.

Does this experience argue for hard deadlines and punishments to hold students

externally accountable because they aren’t capable of holding themselves accountable? Does it

argue for the opposite, that students actually need more opportunities to “choose for themselves”

their learning and their success or failure in the classroom? How do we strike the correct balance

between encouraging internal motivation and learning independence, hoping our students will

become self-driven, life-long learners, and “forcing” students to compete tasks necessary for

them to be “good” students, but perhaps failing to help them develop the internal tools necessary

to sustain genuine learning now and in their futures?

Similar questions to these arose in another class I recently taught, ENG 321. Unlike in

101, students in this course are usually juniors or seniors, half are English majors and half are

Web Design and Development majors. Many of them take the course expecting to develop

additional skills necessary to help them get a job as soon as they graduate. They seem motivated

by more than just grades. The projects that semester were challenging for the students, but

certainly not outside the course’s outcomes or the students’ potential abilities. Adding to the

technical challenge of the projects were some “real life” elements students had to contend with

such as shifting deadlines, unexpected demands from clients, team dynamics, working with

student teams from other classes, etc. All of the elements combined made me consider this one

of the best courses I had ever taught. Many of the students, however, thought differently.

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The real world nature of the course upset those students who just wanted a checklist

(integrated into I-Learn, if possible) that they could complete, with specific points attached to

each item that would update immediately in the gradebook upon completion. Also, some

students were very uncomfortable when they would look to me for the answer to a technical or

non-technical problem, and I would encourage them to do some research and brainstorm possible

solutions on their own first.

Below are three line graphs that clearly show the blip downward in my course and

instructor student evaluations from the course. We have to be careful how we interpret student

evaluations; making drastic changes to courses and teaching approaches in reaction to specific

student evaluation data may not always be warranted, as it is not always clear what the data

mean. For example, the result from the course satisfaction question is extremely difficult to

interpret. The data indicate that students at BYU-Idaho rate each course they take on average as

“a little more” satisfactory that all the other courses they take!

Still, I do believe student evaluations can reveal how students perceived or experienced

the course, which can be useful to teachers and institutions. In my ENG321 course, it is obvious

that a significant percentage of the students found the course less satisfactory to them than other

students in my courses have in other semesters. Here are the graphs.

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A thorough discussion of the value of course evaluations is beyond the scope of this

article. My point here is to recognize how the ENG321 course design and methodology caused a

noticeable drop in student satisfaction, including in the case of the “instructor feedback” ratings,

in how positively students perceived specific actions by me.

My impression is the only significant difference from previous semesters of the course

was the amount of freedom and responsibility the students had regarding their learning. The

freedom students had to complete the projects, as well as the level of self-discipline demanded

by such freedom seemed difficult for some students to manage. Also, my refusal to immediately

respond to students’ requests for “help” when I thought they should struggle a bit and try to

figure out the answers on their own, seemed to cause some students real heartburn. Here are

several statements from the evaluations that semester:

It could've been really neat had it been implemented in the beginning with a clear, structured, and organized syllabus/schedule.

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He expected us to figure out everything on our own...  

It was just so frustrating and upsetting to have a teacher that didn't know anything about what we were learning.

It would also help if the teacher set deadlines for us to complete the work. I know it would be best if we were grown up enough to set our own deadlines, but…

Ouch. The comments clearly indicate dissatisfaction with what I considered a great semester of

challenging learning, growth, and accomplishment for the students. (And here I add that most of

the students earned A’s or high B’s for their final course grades. Low grades were not the issue

here—the students just didn’t like dealing with the “uncertainties” of the real world type of

projects. The demands of self-discipline and responsibility for their own progress seemed to be

too much for many of them).

As I pondered over these results, I wondered if perhaps there are things I could do to

encourage students to be less dependent on me in ways that handicap their progress toward

becoming self-reliant, life-long learners. Rather than claiming these as “Best Practices,” I’ll call

them simply “Possible Practices,” representative of the types of steps we might take in our

classes to reduce students’ academically unhealthy dependence on teachers and technology.

Possible Practices

Offer answers to students’ questions that teach, not just supply information Resist demands to provide significant “help” to students the day before due dates,

especially to students who have been disengaged up to that point Limit the number and duration of office visits for students who are becoming “addicted”

to teacher assistance in order to perform well Hold students accountable for faulty or lazy thinking Hold students accountable for poor self-management Remember: I-Learn is made for teachers, not teachers for I-Learn

SELF-RELAINCE FIRST, GROUP WORK SECOND

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Let me begin this section with its conclusion: the basic principle here is each student

deserves personal, accurate feedback from his or her teacher on the student’s individual mastery

of the knowledge and skills the course is created to teach. If group work can be incorporated

into a course and still allow for the following of this principle, then all is well. If group work is

an obstacle to the pursuit of this principle, it’s probably not worth including in the course.

Much has been written about group work, and the conclusions from the research are not

definitive. For example, recently, Thomas J. Tomcho of Salisbury University and Rob Foels

from the University of Connecticut (2012), conducted a meta-analysis of thirty-seven previous

studies on group activities, with all but four of the studies conducted since 2000.

Tomcho and Foels admitted that some of their findings were “counterintuitive” and even

“contrary to the majority of literature” regarding group work. For example, they found that

students in groups actually learn more when there is not a “group accountability component (as

measured by a group presentation)” than when there is. They theorized group presentations

increase the prevalence of team “loafers,” as well as often require students to be responsible for

only one component of the overall project, leading to students failing to learn all of the course’s

material (see also Bacon, 2005 and Slavin, 1990).

Tomcho and Foels also found the absence of peer assessment elements in group activities

actually led to more “robust learning outcomes” than in group activities that incorporated peer

assessment. They readily acknowledged such a finding counters studies that support the idea

that peer assessment is associated with greater learning outcomes, but, they said, the data they

analyzed from the thirty-seven studies “did not support this view.” They recommended,

“teachers should carefully weigh the educational benefits [of peer assessment components]

because the current data indicates a diminished learning effect is possible” when they are used.

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(Another interesting finding from this study is group projects or activities seem to lead to

better learning when they are brief—one to three class periods in length—rather than long—one

half a semester or longer—and when the teams or groups are regularly reconstituted.)

My main point in citing this study is to suggest we take action carefully when it comes to

how we use group work, as the research on the subject is more mixed than we might realize.

Teachers need to teach students how to tell the difference between quality and junk, clear

thinking and confused, deep learning and shallow. Group work needs to be designed with that

responsibility in mind. As Wayne C. Booth (1988) observed, when “groups are examined they

usually reveal the presence of only one or two scholars, who do a great deal of private thinking.”

In my limited experience, no matter how group work is managed, there is a percentage of

students who “skate” and a percentage who “do all the work.” It seems practically impossible

for all students in a group to prepare thoroughly and participate “equally” or “fairly.” And why

should this surprise us? In our courses, some students earn A’s, some B’s, and some C’s. Why

would we expect students in groups to not perform according to a similar distribution?

Some learning outcomes may be best achieved through group work. My claim, which is

nothing new, is we need to be consciously aware of what group work is and isn’t doing for our

students. For example, some researchers claim long-term team activities are good for developing

“students’ higher level cognitive skills in large classes, providing social support for ‘at-risk’

students, promoting the development of interpersonal and group skills, and building and

maintaining faculty members’ enthusiasm for their teaching role” (Michaelsen & Black, 1994;

see also Michaelsen, Jones, & Watson, 1993; Watson, Michaelsen & Sharp, 1991). These are

worthy outcomes; however, in addition to these outcomes, will the students also learn the

material the course is designed to teach, individually and thoroughly?

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Many of our graduates will work as members of teams. Wouldn’t we expect the most

productive team members to come to the project meetings and brain storming sessions as

competent, independent thinkers and doers, well-versed in their fields of endeavor? To put it

crudely, a committee of dunces surely can’t be more valuable than a knowledgeable individual.

In the business world, fifty years of research suggests knowledgeable individuals are more

valuable and productive than teams or groups (for examples, see Dunnette’s 1963 3M

experiments; DeMarco & Lister’s 1980s “Coding War Games;” Girotra, Terwiesch & Ulrich’s

2010 research on “group dynamics”). In any case, research on group work in higher education, as

can be said of most research in higher education, is too contradictory for me to comfortably ride

the group work pendulum as it swings back and forth.

Again, each student deserves from the teacher personal, accurate feedback on the

student’s individual mastery of the knowledge and skills the course is created to teach. If group

work allows students, individually, to learn and practice all of this knowledge and these skills,

then all is well. If group work becomes an obstacle in following this principle, it may not be

wise to include it in the course.

Possible Practices

Assess each student individually for all learning outcomes Use groups as sounding boards for individuals Require students to brainstorm or prepare individually first before allowing them to work

in pairs or groups Design incentives that encourage individual performance that then leads to superior

group outcomes Understand that group work is good for certain learning outcomes, but generally not for

evaluation of individual knowledge or skill, especially if it takes the place of teacher feedback

BUT I WORKED HARD ON THIS ASSIGNMENT

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Four hours per week. That’s the difference between earning a C and earning an A.

According to the Annual National Survey of Student Engagement (2012), freshmen earning A’s

or A-‘s study about four hours more per week than their peers earning C+’s or lower. At BYU-

Idaho that would mean about fifty hours over the course of the semester. Or to look at it another

way, “A” students squeeze in the equivalent of one long work week more of studying each

semester than “C” students. Is that a lot? That’s a question I ask my students.

We say students should study six hours outside of class each week for a 3-credit course.

Let’s just assume that six hours outside of class per 3-credit course is the “right” amount. A full-

time student at twelve credits should put in twenty-four hours each week outside of class time.

How many hours do students actually spend? That question is very difficult to answer

accurately; most figures we have on this rely on self-reported data, which can be unreliable. Still

working with survey data, the National Survey of Student Engagement prepared the table below.

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None of the amounts of hours in the various categories is as high as twenty-four, and the

hours faculty thought students should spend were generally close to the hours students said they

did spend. So, we may universally say two hours outside of class for each hour in class, but

maybe we really mean more like one or one and a half.

The third column is more interesting. In each case, faculty thought students studied

significantly fewer hours than what students claimed. It would appear that based on student

performance, teachers assumed students weren’t working hard enough or long enough. So, on

one hand, students claim they work close to as hard as teachers say they should be—in some

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cases even harder (more hours) than what teachers say they should be. On the other hand,

faculty think students way under-dedicate themselves to their studies. And, of course, all these

figures are significantly below the common standard of twenty-four hours per week outside of

class.

What is going on here, really? It is difficult to say definitively; if we assume accuracy in

column one—that students actually do spend the amount of time they report—then what of

columns two and three? It may be that our equation of two hours outside for every hour inside

class is correct after all, and students just need to put in more time and effort. Also, perhaps

teachers should recalibrate their projections of how much time it takes students to succeed. In

my case, sometimes I forget how beginners can struggle with concepts and practices I find

obvious.

Of course, if columns two and three are accurate, then the data in column one are not, and

students over-report their efforts. The jaded faculty in me would say that yes, students over

report the amount and quality of their efforts. Most faculty have experienced talking to a student

who is upset with his or her grade and the student saying, “But I worked hard on this

assignment.” After asking the student some questions, the teacher realizes the student’s

definition of “worked hard” is far different than the teacher’s.

In his most recent devotional address, President Clark (2013) stressed to BYU-Idaho

students that “learning is hard work” and “that is especially true for the deep learning that is

essential to the Father’s plan of salvation.” He also said “developing the capacity to do hard

work” is essential for our salvation (2013). Faculty members must help students develop this

essential capacity. Students should be challenged. It should take hard work to earn high grades

in our courses. Faculty have a responsibility to hold students accountable for sub-par work and

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effort. Dallin H. Oaks (1976), then president of Brigham Young University, told students that

they could expect their “teachers to be explicit and forthright in describing your shortcomings,”

and that “A teacher who rewards an average performance with a mark of distinction is false to

the trust of his or her students.” Of course, in addition to mental and physical effort, faith and

spiritual effort is also required, but as Harold B. Lee (1971) said, “Let no one think that ‘learning

by faith’ contemplates an easy or lazy way to gain knowledge and ripen it into wisdom.” We

want graduates who are fully committed, life-long learners, not the kind of Latter-day Saints

Brigham Young lamented we were becoming, who wished “to learn how to secure their way

through this world as easily and as comfortably as possible” (as cited in Nibley, 1976).

Possible Practices

Survey “A” students to discover what they did to be successful in the course; share the results with the next class

Allow revisions or resubmissions on major assignmentso Only with prior approval and conferencingo Grade doesn’t automatically improve just for “revising”; there has to be serious

improvement Discuss with students how they use their time Do not offer extra credit If offer extra credit—only for students with all work turned in and on time—it’s extra

credit, not replacement credit for worked not done Resist grade inflation to help students recalibrate their “hard work” gauge Set and maintain high expectations and reward achievement accurately Remember that “hard work” does not simply mean “more work”

WOW, YOUR STUDENTS TAKE NOTES?

A colleague of mine has a Doonesbury comic strip taped to his door:

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• DOONESBURY © 1985 G. B. Trudeau. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL UCLICK. All rights reserved.

The professor is finally resigned to failure in getting his students to engage with the course

material. But in the eyes of the students, the professor is just a content provider—a talking

Wikipedia article. When I first read the comic, I was jealous. I stepped into my office, grabbed

a Post-it, wrote “Wow, your students take notes?” on it, and stuck it to the comic strip. The note

is still there today.

In his devotional address in September, 2013, President Clark spoke about what it takes

for students to succeed in their classes:

Deep learning involves doing the hard work of reading with purpose, taking notes, asking

questions, and writing down insights that come. It involves working the problems,

practicing and more practicing, learning the techniques, and working to understand the

principles and concepts so you can apply them. It is preparing for and actively

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participating in classes. It is helping others by teaching them what you have learned. It is

doing all of this over and over again so that you grow in knowledge and skill.

Clark’s description is certainly an ideal. We would love to have a class full of dedicated

students. In our worthwhile efforts to encourage our students to do all of the things Clark lists,

we have often focused on creative uses of technologies and various forms of assessment to

“encourage” student engagement. Generally, such efforts are to be applauded; however, in the

end, the main influence on a student’s engagement with a course—other than the student him or

herself—is the teacher. The more a teacher is a “content provider,” or even a “learning

facilitator,” as opposed to a teacher, the more students will distance themselves from the course.

Regardless of the medium used, the personal and professional interaction between student and

teacher is essential for the “deep learning” Clark speaks about. Or as Steven Krause (2013) put

it: “I learn a lot from cooking shows (and cookbooks, magazines and websites about food), but

that’s no substitute for a cooking class led by a knowledgeable teacher who can review my

chopping skills and answer my questions regarding seasoning.”

The recent excitement about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as being the

ultimate solution to many educational challenges, seems to be wearing off a bit as MOOC

providers face the reality that student engagement continues to be, perhaps, the issue in learning

success, and MOOCs seem to have a difficult time even acknowledging this issue, let alone

effectively dealing with it. Often in life, we don’t mind not having, or even try to avoid, human

interaction: paying for gas at the convenience store, for example. But in most learning models,

close student-teacher interaction is vital. The challenge is to interact in ways that will encourage

student engagement of the type that leads to actual learning, and that helps students to develop a

desire to learn, not the type that is really just entertainment—like a funny Super Bowl

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commercial, enjoyed at the time, but soon forgotten. Discussion of this topic of student-teacher

interaction is delicate. Obviously, not all good teachers are good entertainers, nor would we

demand them to be. We would hesitate to claim that Christ, the ultimate teacher, “entertained”

his students.

Wayne Booth felt upset when students reported they “enjoyed” another professor’s

course more than his. Booth questioned the students’ judgment, as he considered the other

professor a “terrible teacher, a menace to the students.” But the students seemed to “all just love

him. ‘His classes are just plain fun.’ ‘His classes are the most exciting I ever took.’ ‘His course

made me decide to major in English.’” When Booth read these student comments, he was

“miserable for an hour afterward: who wants to be admired by students who admire a fraud like

[the other teacher] so much?” Booth is frank in his assessment of the other teacher, but I would

suspect many faculty have had similar thoughts before, if not so bluntly admitted.

As we interact with students, we need to focus on our foundational goals, which don’t

necessarily include entertaining our students, especially if the entertainment replaces interaction

of higher educational value. Content presentation is important, but it is not, ultimately, as

important as the content itself. If we aren’t careful, we can serve wonderfully yummy milk and

the “babies” won’t recognize they are adults who need to be masticating steak.

If, at times, teachers need to sacrifice entertainment to serve the better goal of “deep

learning,” then teachers must be willing to do so. After all, teachers cannot learn for the student,

or as Clark (2013) counseled our students, “If you ever struggle to learn and get discouraged,

please take to heart this counsel. Humble yourself before the Lord, and then take responsibility

for your own learning. Resolve to work harder and to work smarter […] Don’t blame the

teachers or the textbook or the materials.” Clark expects students to understand they are

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ultimately in control of their learning, and, until students internalize and take action on that

principle, both content and content presentation will have limited value, but especially content,

and teachers don’t want to mistake positive student reaction to presentation of content for student

learning of content.

Possible Practices

Teach class as if every student is prepared Invite unprepared students to step out and return when they are prepared or segregate

them so they can work to get prepared while the rest of the class moves on Do not summarize readings or lectures or exercises students did as homework Post selectively on I-Learn, in a manner that doesn’t encourage students to disengage

during class Do not allow electronics in class until appropriate Set aside class time for reflection

GRUBBING FOR POINTS

We all recognize the student who cares far more about points than learning. Such

students often receive very high grades, but we are not always sure if they actually learned very

much. Such students are not likely to become inspired to learn for learning’s sake. They may go

on to achieve “great things” in life, but never be life-long learners. Teachers should find ways to

encourage such students to change focus away from points and grades only, and toward learning

and personal development.

Possible Practices

Eliminate points—make assignments intrinsically valuable as stepping stones to a final assignment that receives a letter grade

Carefully review the use of extra credit—it’s extra, not replacement, and only for students caught up and on time

Resist speaking with students about their grades the day they get back assignments Disable the “what if calculator” on I-Learn Require students to reflect on the assignment and their learning, writing out their

thoughts, before they can speak to you about their grade

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LIFE-LONG LEARNING WHAT?

Life-long learning is difficult to visualize. The concept of learning seems easily

understood in an academic context, but what do we mean by our desire for everyone to be a

“life-long learner?” What will we all be learning for our entire lives? That is a fair question.

One can appreciate the irony of a concerned father taking advantage of a commercial break

during Duck Dynasty to advise his college-bound son to stick to his studies and avoid wasting his

time and energy on video games. Also, one can imagine a daughter moving back in with her

parents after completing school, content to be through with “learning,” and now all she need

worry about is finding a job.

Often students view school as an artificial environment in which one must endure the

painful learning game and after graduation one can enter the “real” world in which learning is

over and now it is time to “use” the learning. Learning in school is difficult, and if we are going

to be life-long learners, would we expect learning not to be difficult outside of school? As

teachers, we should not seek to ease the learning pain of our students, rather we should seek to

strengthen their tolerance of and ability to endure the pain necessary. “Anyone knows that

getting an education is painful,” said Mortimer J. Adler (1968), professor of Law at the

University of Chicago. “Those who try to make it painless obviously completely remove its bite.

An Education without any bite doesn’t sink in.” And Adler wasn’t talking only about learning in

school.

Like water, many students seek the path of least resistance: “Just tell me what it takes to

get an A or a B or even a C.” They want to know only what is “necessary” as if space to store

knowledge in their brains is at a premium. They desire to learn only what they perceive they will

“need” at their future jobs. In short, they want to be taught how to “tie their shoes.” They wear

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shoes. They know they will have to tie them. When they step out of the classroom, shoe tying

will be a “useful” skill, and so they want teachers to teach them how to do it and not waste their

time with other less “useful” knowledge. Such a student is not on track to be a “life-long

learner” any more than the boy who figures out the minimum amount of work and time required

to earn his Eagle rank and get his parents off his back could be considered on track to becoming

a “life-long scouter.”

“Deep learning,” Clark (2013) has said, “is not cramming facts and figures into your

short term memory so you can pass a test, or doing the minimum amount of work required to get

a good grade.” And, I suggest, Clark would agree that “life-long learning” must also include

dedication to attaining knowledge and wisdom that reaches beyond tying shoes all day and then

going home to watch TV or play games all evening.

As faculty, we must not shelter our students from the difficult, often painful, experiences

that help shape them into educated, wise, cultured citizens and thinkers. “We believe,” Clark

(2006) again has said, “the university should be a living model of the high standards we want to

teach and develop in our students.” Faculty must model passion and scholarship, not a shoe-

tying mentality. Or as Arthur Henry King (1973) explained:

The course should be there, the lecture given, not so much to provide information as to

exemplify method, develop skills, apply principles; to show how learning is organized,

how it can stimulate through organization and lead through discussion to a new

organization. If courses are used just to pass on information […] then they are replacing

something else which is better suited to do this: the library.

Faculty must not just supply information. They must model what it means to be a “life-long

learner,” or to use the more precise but less fashionable term, what it means to be a scholar. We

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must model scholarship because many students aren’t familiar with what it means, for, as

President Harold B. Lee (1971) stated, “Some [students and members of the Church] quit

learning when they graduate from school; some quit learning about the gospel when they have

completed a mission for the Church; some quit learning when they become an executive or have

a prominent position in or out of the Church.” And his point is that none of us should ever stop

learning.

If we don’t model scholarship for our students and require them to work hard at the hard

work of learning, they will never experience the joy that comes from true learning, which,

according to Simone Weil, “is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where [joy]

is lacking there are no real students, but only poor caricatures of apprentices who, at the end of

their apprenticeship, will never have a trade” (as qtd. in Ramos, 2005).

Possible Practices

Be a “life-long learner” or scholar Share with students the process of learning As appropriate, require students to demonstrate learning in addition to effort and

knowledge Remind students that greater joy and the ability to be more useful to our Heavenly father

is found in learning all things Stay active and current in academic fields

FORGET ABOUT HARD THINGS

Over the last several years, the phrase “do hard things” has found plenty of play time on

talk shows, in books, in speeches, even on T-shirts and bumper stickers. I understand the intent

of this “movement”: to challenge young people to raise their sights, to assure them they have

more worth and can accomplish more than they might think. This is all well and good.

However, in considering college students, I would be pleased if we instead focused on

getting students to do the “easy things.” In the Church, we rightly celebrate the young woman

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who rises to the challenge and completes a handcart trek, or the young man who endures to the

end of the 50-miler. But what a struggle it can be to get that same young man to show up early

before church to set up chairs in the Relief Society room, or to get that young woman to bring

her scriptures to Sunday school class.

Maybe we are familiar with the J. Golden Kimball tale of when visiting a stake whose

members struggled to pay a faithful tithe, he asked by a show of hands how many members

actually paid a full tithe, and only half or so of the hands went up. He then asked how many

members would be willing to die for the Lord, and nearly every hand went up. Elder Kimball

turned to the stake leaders and said, “Hell, President, there’s your problem. Your members

would rather die than pay tithing!”

Many of our students seem to have a similar challenge. They are all up for doing the

“hard things,” but they don’t understand the great power that comes from doing the “easy

things.” As faculty, we can teach and encourage or require them to

Attend class Take notes Do homework Get sleep at night Wake up on time Study every day Ask questions Concentrate

There are many “hard things” to do in life, I suppose, but the big challenge for our students is

often to do the day-to-day “easy things,” which, they will find, are often the most important

things.

Possible Practices

Stress the importance of doing the “easy things” in our classes Do the “easy things” in our own lives

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CONCLUSION

Once, as I was browsing the shelves in the library, I ran across a little advertisement, part

of an on-going campaign to make students and faculty feel good about the library at BYU-Idaho.

The little infographic assured me that our library, if we counted all of our e-books, was just as

good or maybe even better than other university libraries in the region because it has more

books. I looked around the library: lots of students in line for a sandwich at the café, lots of

students talking and texting on phones, students in groups—some studying together, some

talking about non-academic topics—students at the computers—some studying, perhaps, some

using social media. I looked again at the little ad bragging about the number of volumes in the

library’s collection. I would have felt much better if the advertisement had instead offered some

indication of how many of its books, print or electronic, were ever checked out and read by our

students. Would that be a statistic to brag about? Or what if we had published how many of our

students go on to professional or graduate schools? Or how our students fare on the GRE or other

such exams?

“We have a wonderful, inspired mission,” President Clark (2005) has said, “…to educate

our students with high quality; to prepare them for the responsibilities they will face…” This

call for quality is, indeed, imperative to the successful, progressive realization of this institution’s

academic, spiritual, and temporal goals. And this call to improve quality is not directed only at

curriculum and course design, but also includes a call to help students take responsibility for

their own learning.

For me, I would have all students pin up a photograph of themselves sitting alone at a

desk at two in the morning, clearly wrestling with the academic material before them, as a

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reminder to them that great learning, like all great revelation, comes most often when we are

struggling alone in the lab.

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