Troy Rector
and
Vincent Stults
Ball State University
November 9th, 2014
EDAC 634
Roles: Vince - intro, Josh Arthur's profile and review, and reflected on review in the conclusion
Troy - joint conclusion, Dr. Marianne Wokeck's profile and review, and reflected on review in the conclusion
Introduction
What follows is a program evaluation regarding our program
design that was completed for our last month's assignment. Our program design
was based upon transformational learning theory. It was based on the idea that transformational
learning can occur when student’s personal, structural, historical, and
programmatic experiences directly contrast with their prior thoughts and
conceptions (Kiely, 2005). We chose to use cultural immersion as the trigger to
lead learners into an understanding that is not simply informational, but that
significantly changes what they know, moving them through the transformational
learning cycle of "experience, critical reflection, rational discourse,
and action" (Merriam et al 2007, p 134). We chose adult learners at Ivy
Tech Community College to be our participants, inviting them on a learning
journey to seek answers to their own learning quest, about themselves, their
social context, or society, through facilitating learning opportunities in a
cross-cultural context (the Arab community of Dearborn Michigan) with the goal
of seeing students become better equipped to be leaders in a global society.
We sent this program design to two educators who we believed
could provide critical feedback on our project design and who had the breadth
of knowledge and experience to effectively evaluate the scope and purpose of
our design.
Josh Arthur's Profile
For the past 12 years, Josh Arthur has been engaged in
initiating and building local community development and educational programs in
East Central Indiana. He is currently the Regional Director, ASAP at IVY Tech,
for East Central Indiana, which is a newly formed program to assist students in
finishing their associate degree in one year as an alternative to the two year
traditional path. "He has a passion for holistic student success and is
committed to the academic, personal, formational, and vocational growth of each
student" (Muncie Free Press, 2014).
Josh Arthur's Review
Arthur's first response focused on the intended target
participants and the scope of the program. He commented that, "As an educator at Ivy Tech Community College,
this formational trip fills a large gap in the needs of Ivy Tech students—both
those pursuing liberal arts and vocational trades. Regarding the personal benefit to students,
he added that "These types of learning experiences are beneficial
personally, professionally, civically, and financially." Followed by
reflection on his own personal experience, “In fact, I had very similar
educational experiences organized by my undergraduate professors, and I cannot
overstate their importance to my own development—even 15 years later."
In his review of the design,
he offered a couple of suggestions for improvement. First he recommended that it would be good to
include students, "behind the scenes of the
design" exposing them more to the "reasons" of its development.
Secondly, he encouraged us to build into
the design, "an additional outcome for students to connect other courses'
class work to the experience" and to provide them a means to explore how the
experience impacted them "holistically—personally, politically,
relationally, financially, academically, family of origin, civically,
artistically, architecturally, nutritionally, etc."
He appreciated several design
factors, such as "the use of evaluative tools for gauging student outcomes"
and "using direct teaching methods to inform students of the total process."
He further added that, "The project is well organized in such a way as to
garner the students' trust in the leaders and the experience." He also
thought the min-ethnography was useful process.
Overall he added that, "A project like this creates a needed bridge
to development that current academic foci on data and information have
lost."
Dr. Marianne Wokeck Profile
Dr. Marianne Wokeck is a
Chancellor’s Professor of History at Indiana University Purdue University
Indianapolis (IUPUI). She is also the
director of the Institute for American Thought located at IUPUI. In addition, she is an associate dean for
academic affairs within the School of Liberal Arts.
Dr. Wokeck’s education began
in her native Germany where she was educated at Staatsexamen Hamburg University,
graduating in 1973. She went on to
receive her Ph.D. from Temple University in 1982. She has received numerous academic accolades
in her career to include Chancellor's Professor in 2009, the Alwin S. Bynum
Award for Excellence in Academic Mentoring 1996, the Oustanding Academic
Advisor in years 1993, 1997,and 2005, the IU Teaching Excellence Recognition
Award 1997, National Endowment for the Humanities grants (Biographical
Dictionary of Early Pennsylvania Legislators, 1986-91, The Works of George Santayana, 2003-20066),
a Senior Fulbright Scholar (Germany) 1997-98, and Outstanding Female Faculty
2003, 2004
Dr. Wokeck’s publications
include Trade in Strangers: The Beginnings of Mass Migration to North America(Penn
State University Press 1999), (editor and author) Lawmaking and
Legislators in Pennsylvania, vol. 1 (University of Pennsylvania Press
1991), (editor) The Papers of William Penn vols. 3-4
(University of Pennsylvania Press 1986, 1987), numerous articles in scholarly
books and journals, and (editor with others) The Letters of George
Santayana, volume 5 in 8 books of The Works of George Santayana (MIT
Press).
Dr. Marianne Wokeck’s Review
Dr. Wokeck began her review
by stating that she did not know the particulars of the assignment but she
found the current order awkward, leaving the reader with little guidance. She
stated that we may want to consider rearranging our materials (since the
proposal is not paginated, it is difficult to make reference to particular
incidences).
Dr. Wokeck analyzed the
introduction and concluded that it should start out with your goal and be clear
in the audience for whom you write as well the following critiques:
- proposing an
experiential learning experience in response to needs articulated by adult
learners, who are employed by corporations with connections to and
interest in Arabic and/or Muslim partners and clients
- Creating an
experiential learning experience that uses a cycle of instruction,
information gathering, readings, discussion, activities, and reflection
that, ideally, is transformational
- Using intensive
cultural immersion as the method for creating that experiential learning
experience
- State the objectives
clearly
- State the learning
outcomes clearly
- Indicate the
evaluation methods and measures
Dr.
Wokeck’s suggestion is to state the goals clearly and then provide the
references from our literature review that are pertinent for each point. In her
opinion, the experience of our literature review are secondary and can go into
a footnote or appendix (preceding the bibliography, for example).
It was also her opinion that
we are much more explicit and expansive in our interest in devising a cultural
immersion experience than in sketching out how that cultural immersion would
actually work. For example she asked, why do you choose certain places, foods,
representatives? How do you vet them for the appropriateness of achieving the
learning outcomes? As someone who has overseen comparable oversees programs and
cultural immersion experiences I would want to know more about those
considerations and selections.
She elaborated further about
the literature cited and said that much of the literature that we cited is
jargon-porne, those professional habits have made it into our own words. She
went on to say that unless our audience are only other educators, that kind of
jargon-laden language detracts from what we want to convey.
Conclusion and Reflection
Arthur's qualifications in
community development and education, and his current role at IVY Tech make him
an ideal candidate for evaluation of this program. His response was
encouraging, balanced, and helpful. Arthur's affirmation of our intended focus
on students at IVY Tech, demonstrated that our program would be valuable for students
in that context. He also revealed important design considerations. Each
recommendation for improvement would provide a more meaningful experience for
the student participants. The challenge to including students in the reasoning
behind the design process would need to be integrated into our pre-field
preparations as a part of the students first meeting and might also include
additional pre-reading materials.
Creating an additional learning outcome to connect the experience to
their previous classes and for evaluating the experiences impact on their lives
in a more "holistic" manner could prove challenging, but would add
benefit to the students and their advisory teams.
Dr. Wokeck’s credentials and
professionalism speak for themselves.
She has reviewed, counseled, and conducted performance reviews on other
professors. I not only value her opinion
and comments, but fully understand that she does not “sugar coat” anything she
analyzes. She gives a firm yet fair
evaluation to anything she is asked.
We fully intend to take her
recommendation on the details of the culture immersions. In her professional opinion, we didn’t
elaborate on how the cultural immersion would actually work and with some
detailed instructions, guidance, and explanation, this can be
accomplished. We also intend to use her
comments to further “professionalize” our project. What can be viewed as jargon or normal
language use, can be “professionalized” and “cleaned up” to reflect the
education level as well as adult educators that we’ve become.
Both reviewers came from
different backgrounds but brought valuable and helpful reviews for our
project. Both of them were fair yet firm
and didn’t appease us or the project. They
were hard on us when they needed to be yet professional and gave us suggestions
and improvement ideas alongside their criticism. This professional review will aide us greatly
as we move forward with this project. We
can see clearly some of the errors and mistakes that can be corrected, and we
can move forward to creating an adult education program that is both
professional yet informative.
References
Kiely, R. (2005).
Transformative international service learning. Academic Exchange Quarterly, 9(1), 275-281.
Merriam, S. B., Caffarella, R.
S., & Baumgartner, L. M. (20007). Learning in adulthood: A comprehensive
guide. John Wiley & Sons.
Muncie Free Press. (2014,
January 24). Ivy Tech Launching One Year Associate Degree Program. Retrieved
November 9, 2014, from http://www.munciefreepress.com/node/30167
I'm not sure this month's lessons were that much different than the previous months. We've had our ups and downs as a team, for me at times this month maybe even more downs than ups. However, as I reflect on this month's work in EDAC634, it seems that one word comes to mind, and that one word makes all the difference—perseverance.
Perseverance is also the overall one word description for November for me as well. Whether it was technology issues, conflicts in schedules, starting a new contract, or personal barrier, I too had to overcome and persevere.
