Student Services can be distant and detached

It has been great fun to partner with Ken Derry at UTM and brainstorm new ways to teach undergraduates.  He joined my class (1803: Recurring Issues in Higher Education) to discuss how empathy and engagement must go hand in hand for instructors.

This picture shows an activity from early February when the class used Lego to show the challenges facing student service providers. Since many of them are student service providers, their models were excellent.  This model showed the power gap between the student (who seems absent) and the student service provider who has some cumbersome infrastructure.

It took some time for my professional M.Ed students to warm up to this activity, but it has definitely received the most positive feedback of any tool so far.  By the time each group had explained their model, we had analysed almost every angle and contingency of student affairs work.

Lego modeling was one of the engagement tools we discussed when Ken joined the class this week and we had a chance to think critically about all the pedagogy tools we had been using.  It is delightfully humbling to have an outside facilitator lead your students in a discussion of your pedagogy. I suspect I will need to  change several of the assignments for the next course based on their helpful feedback!