achievers, innovators and the power of telling your story: advising to promote integrated lives erin...
TRANSCRIPT
Achievers, Innovators and the Power of Telling Your Story:
Advising to Promote Integrated Lives
Erin Alanson & Debbie BrawnUniversity Honors Program
University of Cincinnati
Session Goals
• Discuss the relevance of
Innovation
Reflection
Integration
• Consider ways to promote reflection and integration to create innovators
• Share best practices as a community invested in creating socially responsible individuals
Individual Reflection
If the employer of your dream job was sitting next to you and
you had 30 seconds to introduce yourself and summarize your
key accomplishments,
what would you say?
The Engaged StudentLeaderShape graduate &
on-site coordinator
Project Unbreakable
Student government’s Director of Women’s Affairs
ElectHer planning committee member
CONNECT conference planning committee member
WorkFest
Communication Sciences & Disorders Major
Student Singer
Study abroad to Rome
Honors Ambassador
Undergraduate research
18-credit hour semester
Summer internship
in·no·va·tion
Innovation
“True innovation means using your imagination, exercising the capacity to envision new possibilities…It’s not about inventing a new machine or a new drug. It’s about inventing your own life. Not following a path, but making your own path.” – William Deresiewicz
What Are you Going to Do With That? 2010
Innovation
“It’s a process by which…new things take place. I look at innovation as an approach.”
– Sir Andrew LikiermanDean of the London Business School
“Creative problem solving.”-Ellen Bowman
Retired director of external affairs for Procter & Gamble
UHP Mission Statement
University Honors is committed to helping students maximize their educational opportunities at UC while discovering and pursuing their passions in life and using their gifts and talents
to make meaningful contributions to society.
Expe
rienc
e
Integration
Experience
Experience
InnovationExperience
Experience
Community
Reflection
Community
Play, Passion & Purpose• Creating Innovators: The Making of
Young People Who Will Change the World by Tony Wagner (2012)
• Educators should encourage the pursuit of play, passion, and purpose
• Students should dabble in endeavors as a means of finding their passion; then use their passions to frame their larger purpose and goals
Play• Do things because they are fun
• Explore opportunities
• Less pressure to do it all; instead encourage students to do the things they love
Losing the ability to play
• Children know what excites and motivates them; hopefulness evaporates as they get older
• Young adults are left not knowing what impact they want to make on the world
• Too much structure eliminates the opportunities for play
Trombone Player Wanted by Marcus Buckingham
Passion
• Explore and learn something new
• Understand more deeply
• Master something difficult
• Persevere
Purpose
Channel a passion to
make a difference
Play, Passion, Purpose
• Through creative, less structured play, young adolescents are able to discover a passion.
• As they pursue their passions, their interest may change, evolve and take surprising turns.
• Refined passions develop into a mature sense of purpose – a kind of adult play.
• Failing early and often is key.
Mission StatementUniversity Honors is committed to helping students PLAY at UC while discovering their PASSIONS and using their gifts
and talents to discover their PURPOSE.
Reflection & integration embedded as central threads of the University Honors program.
Reflection
• What?– What happened?
• So What?– What impact did the
experience make?• Now What?
– Where do you go and what do you do next?
Kolb’s Model of
Experiential Education
(1984)
Gibb’s Model of Learning by Doing
(1988)
Integration
“Fostering students’ abilities to integrate learning – across courses, over time, and between campus and community life – is one of the most important goals and challenges of higher education.”
– Association of American Colleges and UniversitiesThe Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
“Application of knowledge takes precedence over acquisition and mastery of facts alone, activating a dynamic process of
question posing, problem posing and solving, decision making, high-order
critical thinking, and reflexivity.” – Julie Klein
professor of humanities in interdisciplinary studies
Wayne State University
Integration
Integration
“Few college graduates can expect to spend a whole career with the same employer or even in the same line of work. To participate responsibility as local citizens, then, people must also be citizens of the world, aware of complex interdependence and able to synthesize information from a wide array of sources, learn from experiences, and make connections between theory and practice.”
– Huber, Hutchings, Gale Peer Review
Can innovation skills be learned?
• According to Wagner, the essential qualities of successful innovators are:– Curiosity– Collaboration– Integrative thinking– Bias toward action and
experimentation
Millennial Generation• Digital natives
• Socially conscious
• Seek healthier lifestyles
• Want to make a difference
• Motivated in different ways
• “We” language
Curiosity
• Develop a habit of asking good questions and a desire to understand more deeply
• Examples:– First-year advising sessions – Gateway to University Honors– FYE common reading
Collaboration
• Listening and learning from others who have perspectives and expertise very different from your own
• Examples:– Group advising sessions – Interdisciplinary, project-based
seminars
Collaboration
Second-Year Group Advising Session
Collaboration
Exploring Leadership
•15-25 students
•Group discussion & small group projects
•Mini-lesson
•Student-driven plan for positive change
Collaboration
Honors Seminars
•Inquiry to Innovation
•Humanitarian Design
•Social Networks & DisasterManagement
•Climate Change: Think Globally, Act Locally
Integrative Thinking
• The process of making connections & synthesizing learning.
• Examples:– Learning portfolios– Elevator speeches– Personal branding– Written and oral outputs
Integrative Thinking
Learning portfolios can help students “overcome fragmentation and make the connections that are vital for personal growth and academic success.”
- Arcario, Eynon, and Clark (2005)
Integrative Thinking
“Designed to help students connect classroom, career, and personal goals and experiences, the e-portfolio moves students toward not only integrated learning, but also more integrated lives.”
- Arcario, Eynon, and Clark (2005)
Integrative Thinking
Third-Year Group
Advising Session
Action & Experimentation
• Self-designed experiential learning projectsLeadership, Community Engagement, Global Studies, Research/Creative Arts
Photography in Hawaii
Student Leadership
Undergraduate Research
Significance & Impact“I think that the opportunities for reflection were extremely
valuable. I don't always have a lot of time to sit and reflect about what has been the best experience or where I need to grow so doing the activity with the post-its and the reflective worksheet
were both good ways to go through [and] reflect on where I am.”
– Third-year student
"Knowing a lot about your field isn't the important thing, Knowing a lot about other things that you can apply to your field is."
- Fourth-year student
Significance & Impact
“I though the mandatory honors advising meeting was very relevant. We really got to the root of a question that is hard to confront alone, that question being "who are you?" The personal branding and innovator language discussions were very tangible and I used that method of thinking in a job interview I had later that day with Nike design. I also liked that our group was so small. I know that wasn't the intention, but I think that small group environment made talking about ourselves more comfortable.”
- Third-year student
Summary
• Educators have the responsibility to help students develop into innovators.
• Students must have opportunities to play, explore passions and discover their purpose.
• Curiosity, collaboration, integrative thinking, and experimentation are key to innovation.
• Failure is a necessary part of the process.
Sharing Ideas
• What ways are students being encouraged to play, explore their passions and discover their purpose?
• What ways are students being encouraged to reflect and integrate their learning?
• In what ways can we change our approaches to better meet the needs of the millennial generation?
ReferencesArcario, P., Eynon, B. & Clark, J.E. (2005). Making connections: Integrated learning, integrated lives. Peer Review, 7(4), 15-17.
Deresiewicz, W. (2010). What are you going to do with that? The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Klein, J.T. (2005). Integrative learning and interdisciplinary studies. Peer Review, 7(4), 8-10.
Kuh, G. (2008). High-impact educational practices: What they are, who has access to them, and why they matter. Washington, D.C.: Association of American Colleges and Universities.
Lang, J. (2012). Helping Students to Tell Their Stories. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Nash, R.J. & Murray, M.C. (2010). Helping college students find purpose: The campus guide to meaning-making. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Wagner, T. (2012). Creating innovators: The making of young people who will change the world. New York: Scribner.
Contact Information
Erin AlansonAssociate Director
University of [email protected]
513-556-6288
http://www.uc.edu/honors
Debbie BrawnAdministrative DirectorUniversity of [email protected]
513-556-6266