Busywork Versus Meaningful Work:What is the Difference?

Matt DeLongTaylor University

mtdelong@taylor.edu

Gratitudes

• Todd Zakrajsek, Gregg Wentzell

• Taylor University’s Bedi Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence

• Jeremy Case

• Barb Bird, Mark Colgan, Scott Gaier and Steve Snyder

http://www.jrbriggs.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Zondervan-Library-and-Rice-Bell-Tower-Taylor-University-Upland-large1.jpg

Some Student Feedback

“The class had too much work,

and

I wish I had learned more.”

Want Student to Read the Book

Ask students to read the book

Give quiz at the beginning of class

Use Clickers to show the results to the rest of the class.

Post question on Blackboard

Discussion Board

Peer review on Blackboard to

compare answersGroups make YouTube

video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ooa8nHKPZ5kExplain to your

roommate what you

have read. Have them

text me with their

response

Post on Blackboard, 3

summary statements,

3 insights, 3 questions

for class

Want Student to Read the Book

http://herrickshighlander.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/stock-footage-student-reading-a-book-in-the-library.jpg

http://www.greenberg-art.com/.Illustrations/.Humorous/qq1sgBusywork.jpg

“Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.”

Thomas A. Edison

http://www.planetmotivation.com/images/thomas-edison.jpg

“Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all school work is learning and to this end there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to learn is not learning.”

Paraphrasing Edison

Brookfield’s Core Assumptions

• Good practice = whatever helps students learn

• Best teaching is critically reflective

• Most important pedagogical knowledge: How students experience their learning

• Context changes everything

Brookfield Plenary, Lilly West 2014

Session Objectives

• Be able to articulate attributes of meaningful work

• Be able to implement specific strategies for increasing meaningful work in your courses

• Be able to (modify or) create assignments and activities to make them (more) meaningful

Agenda

• Think about your own work

• Discuss what makes busywork and meaningful work (according to you, students, and the literature)

• Analyze your assignments in that light

• Look at some things that my colleagues and I are doing to make work more meaningful

• Apply our insights to begin to develop meaningful assignments

Faculty Work

“But more isn’t necessarily better—we don’t measure productivity in academia in terms of hours logged. What are we gaining by the time spent? And are we finding the time we spend meaningful and rewarding?”

Hodges (2013)

In Your Own Work

• What are some parts of your work that you consider to be busywork?

• What are some parts of your work that you consider to be meaningful work?

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Avoiding Overload

1. Be able to be efficient in all things

2. Express your values in how you use your time

3. Don’t hoard responsibility, share it

4. For every aspect of your teaching, find a time and a place befitting it

5. Be short with many so that you can be long with a few

6. Stick to your knitting, refer to other helpers when possible

Reimondo Robertson (2003)

Busywork vs. Meaningful Work

• What are some features of busywork?

• What are some features of meaningful work?

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Busywork According to Students• High effort with little or no

feedback

• Time required out of proportion with learning

• Repeats an already mastered element

• No specific lesson learned

• No thought necessary to complete

• No interaction with material

• No critical thinking

• Work to just fill the time

• Not relevant

• Tedious

From Various Taylor students (2013)

Meaningful Work According to Students

• Hands-on learning

• Assignment that applies to the lesson

• Team-based work

• Problems requiring creativity

• Helps see the broad view

• Encourages discussion of student opinions

• Helps form new ideas

• Relevance to life

• Brings about personal growth

• Meaningful feedback

Meaningful Work According to Students

• Stretches students

• Applicable beyond task

• Teaching to others

• Discovery learning

• Instructor passion for material

• Projects

• Uses time efficiently

• Higher order thinking

From Various Taylor students (2013)

Meaningful Work

1. Has a clear relationship between effort and reward

2. Has a degree of complexity

3. Is autonomous

Gladwell (2008)http://www.flipthiswholesaler.net/wp-content/

uploads/2011/03/outliers.jpg

Meaningful Learning

1. Active

2. Self-directed

3. Constructive

4. Individual

5. Collaborative

6. Conversational

7. Contextual

8. Emotionally-involving

9. Goal-oriented

10. Reflective

11. Abstract

12. Multiple-perspectives oriented

Hakkarainen, Saarelainen and Ruokamo (2007)

Meaningful Homework

1. Purposeful

2. Efficient

3. Personalized

4. Doable

5. Inviting

Vatterott (2009)

Meaningful Busywork

• “Defining busywork as ‘relevant’ or ‘useless’ begins first with an understanding of its purpose, not how it feels as the person completes it.”

• “What helps us define the truly ineffective ‘busywork’ from real ‘worth-the-effort’ work is how respectful the task is to the student.”

Taibbi (2012)

Respectful Tasks

1. Is appropriately rigorous

2. Engages the learner

3. Attends to his/her processing strengths

Tomlinson (2001)

Meaningful Growth

Meaningful work encourages a growth mindset when it

1. emphasizes challenge, not “success,”

2. gives a sense of progress, and

3. is graded for growth.

Dweck (2010)

Three Types of Learners

1. Surface who do as little as possible to get by

2. Strategic who aim for top grades rather than true understanding

3. Deep learnerswho leave college with a real, rich education

Bain (2012)

http://img2.imagesbn.com/p/9780674066649_p0_v1_s260x420.JP

G

Deep Learners

1. Pursue passion, not A’s

2. Get comfortable with failure

3. Make a personal connection to their studies

4. Read and think actively

5. Ask big questions

6. Cultivate empathy for others

7. Set goals and make them real

8. Find a way to contribute

Bain (2012)

Your Assignments

• What is an assignment that you give that you think is meaningful? What makes it so?

• What is an assignment that you give that you think may be busywork, or at least perceived as such by students. What makes it so?

• How could you modify the latter to make it more meaningful (at least in the students’ perception)?

http://sd.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/i/think-pair-then-share.png

Making Work Meaningful at Taylor

• Subject-centered instruction (Gaier)

• Big ideas (Case, Colgan, et al.)

• Explicit student learning objectives (DeLong)

• Reading engagement (Gaier)

• Writing engagement (Bird)

• Critical thinking (Snyder)

Palmer (2010)

Subject-Centered Instruction

• Gather students around the “grace of great things”

• Connect the course back to the big ideas, what they know already, how this is beneficial

• Model a love for learning and make it contagious

33

The Big Questions

“What big questions will my course help students answer… and how will I encourage my students’ interest in these questions…?”

Bain (2010)

• What ideas got us interested in the discipline?

• What are the historical controversies?

• How did the discipline develop?

• Why does anyone care about this information? Why should students care?

34

Their Reflection Model• What were some valuable course activities, assignments,

projects, discussions, topics, etc., that helped you answer this “Big Question ” of the course? (Describe – the past)

• In what ways have you developed skills that help you “think more like a ____” when you now encounter problems? (Analyze – the present)

• What are some way that you can apply the answer to this “Big Question” to your future studies, service, and personal life? (Apply – the future)

Bird, Case, Colgan, Sisson and Stan (2011)

Explicit StudentLearning Objectives

“What should my students be able to do intellectually, physically or emotionally as a result of their learning?”

Bain (2010)

An instructional objective is a statement that

1. describes a desired student outcome of instruction

2. in terms of observable performance

3. under given conditions.

Farrell and Farmer (1988)

Step 3: Decide on a strategy to address each goal.

Step 4: Begin time management.

Step 7: Look back.

Step 8: Put it all together.

Step 5: Plan the learning activities.

Step 6: Write scripts for mini-lectures.

Step 1: Read the section to be covered.

Step 2: Identify the goals for the lesson.

Plan for assess- ment.

Identifying learning objectives.

Select and organize learning activities.

Elaborate on initial ideas.

DeLong and Winter (2001)

Deep Readers

Deep readers focus on “semantic memory” rooted in meaning

Surface readers focus on “episodic memory,” or facts and information tied to a specific joke, gesture, episode, or mnemonic aid

Bean (2010)

Reading Engagement• Don’t reward surface reading

• Explain that experts are not speed readers

• Don’t lecture over the material

• Help students adjust reading strategies for different purposes

• Help students adjust reading strategies for different genres

• Teach students to identify the structure of an argument

• Help students understand the rhetorical context

• Help students critically engage in conversation with the author

• Help students identify and dismantle “cognitive egocentrism”

• Teach necessary “cultural literacy”

• Teach necessary vocabulary and syntax

Engaging Ideas

Use writing assignments to engage all learners through

• non-graded exploratory writing

• thesis-governed academic writing

• essays in other styles and forms

Bean (2010)

Writing Engagement• Relate the content to student’s

personal experiences or previous knowledge

• Explain course concepts to new learners

• Thesis-supporting arguments

• Problem-posing assignments

• Data-provided assignments

• Template assignments

• Assignments of unfamiliar perspectives or “what if” situations

• Summaries of course lectures

• Dialogs or argumentative scripts

• Cases and simulations

Critical Thinking Dispositions

• Truth-seeking

• Open-mindedness

• Systematicity

• Cognitive maturity

• Self-confidence

Snyder, Taylor University Critical Thinking Project

Developing Meaningful Work

Nine questions for developing a meaningful assignment

1. What is the “great thing” that you will gather around?

2. What is one “big idea” of your course?

3. What are your SLOs for this assignment?

4. What will you have students read and how will you help them engage the reading?

Developing Meaningful Work5. What will you have the students write that will help them engage

with the ideas?

6. How will you encourage critical thinking dispositions in the assignment?

7. How will you incorporate student autonomy or choice into the assignment?

8. How will you incorporate collaboration and/or conversation into the assignment?

9. How will you assess the learning from the assignment?

Circling Back

“When faculty are challenged to change traditional teaching practices to promote better student success, all we may see looming before us is additional class preparation time. The best kept secret, however, is how much more time-efficient some of these touted teaching practices are.”

Hodges (2013)

“Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky

http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/literature/fyodor-dostoevsky/

thank you!

References• Ambrose, S., et al. How Learning Works: 7 Research-based Principles for

Smart Teaching. Jossey-Bass, 2010.

• Bain, K. What the best college teachers do. Harvard University Press, 2011.

• Bain, K. What the best college students do. Belknap Press, 2012.

• Bean, J. Engaging ideas: The professor's guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom. Wiley, 2011

• Bird, B., J. Case, M. Colgan, C. Sisson, and T. Stan. “Collaborating to Improve Student Learning: Faculty Across the Disciplines Create a 'Big Idea' Reflection Assignment." Learning Communities Journal, v. 3, 2011

References• DeLong, M. and D. Winter. “An Objective Approach to Student-Centered

Instruction.” PRIMUS, v. XI, no. 1, March 2001.

• Doyle, T. and T. Zakrajsek. The New Science of Learning: How to Learn in Harmony with Your Brain, Stylus, 2013.

• Dweck. “Giving Students Meaningful Work.” Educational Leadership, v. 69, no. 1, September 2010.

• Dweck, Carol. Self Theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development. Psychology Press, Taylor and Francis Group, 1999.

• Fink, Dee. Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. Jossey-Bass, 2003.

References• Farrell, M. and W. Farmer. Secondary Mathematics Instruction: An

Integrated Approach. Janson, 1988.

• Gladwell, M. Outliers: The Story of Success. Back Bay Books, 2008.

• Hakkarainen, Saarelainen and Ruokamo. “Towards meaningful learning through digital video supported, case based teaching.” Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, v. 23, no. 1, 2007.

• Hodges, L. “The Three Most Time-Efficient Teaching Practices.” Tomorrow’s Professor, Msg. #1218, 1/7/13.

• Palmer, Parker. The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher's life. Wiley, 2010.

References• Richlin, L. Blueprint For Learning: Constructing College Courses to

Facilitate, Access, And Document Learning. Stylus, 2006.

• Robertson, D. Making Time Making Change: Avoiding Overload in College Teaching. New Forums Press, 2003.

• Taibbi, C. “Meaningful Busywork: Parsing the Oxymoron.” Gifted-Ed Guru. http://www.psychology today .com/blog/gifted-ed-guru/201203/

meaningful-busywork-parsing-the-oxymoron. Retrieved 2/14/14.

• Tomlinson, C. How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms. The Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 2001

• Vatterott, C. Rethinking homework: Best practices that support diverse needs. The Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 2009.

Busywork Versus Meaningful Work:What is the Difference?

Matt DeLongTaylor University

mtdelong@taylor.edu