Skip Robinson Ph.D., Patrick Eidman, Freda Zody, Kaylee Koch and C.J. Morden
Jalaludin Rumi, Open Secret, Versions by John Moyne and Coleman Barks
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
“The Memoirs of Jesse James”
Richard Brautigan
“I remember all those thousands of hours
that I spent in grade school watching the clock,
waiting for recess or lunch or to go home.
Waiting: for anything but school.
My teachers could easily have ridden with Jesse James
For all the time they stole from me.”
•••
From Robert Maynard Hutchins
“The foundation of democracy is universal suffrage. Universal suffrage makes every [person] a ruler. If every [person] is a ruler, every [person] needs the education that rulers ought to have…. The main purpose of a democratic education system is the education of rulers.”
•••
From Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger
“I got the idea in my head…and I could not get it out – that college was just one more dopey, insane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. What’s the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? It all seemed like exactly the same thing to me, if you take off the wrapping – and it still does! Sometimes I think that knowledge – when it’s knowledge for knowledge’s sake, anyway – is the worst of all. The least excusable, certainly….I don’t think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while – just once in a while there was at least some polite perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn’t it’s just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is: You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the word ‘wisdom’ mentioned.”
A few facts about this class
Our section of Psychology 303 Person in Society has been offered each semester for the last few years here at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, Sonoma County, California. SSU sits about a half hour north of San Francisco Bay and about 50 minutes east of the Pacific Ocean. Sonoma County is widely noted for its beauty.
Each semester, the 303 class begins with the room capacity 68 students in Stevenson 3008, a third floor corner of Adlai Stevenson Hall. Stevenson faces the school’s grassy main quad, which is shown in a photo a few pages forward and in 303’s Fall 08’s three minute film, “A Future”.
Each semester, about half of the students are Psychology Majors. The other half forms an interesting mix of students from about 10 to 12 other majors on campus (such as English, Sociology, Ecology, Education, Music, Art, Philosophy, Political Science, and Criminal Justice). (This built-in interdisciplinarity is such a plus.) This other-majors group (half the class) is likely to register for this course, Psychology 303, because SSU requires quite a few specific General Education (GE) units for graduation; and this class grants upper division general education (GE) credit in a particular needed category in that program. Having this mix has been a special opportunity for learning. As an example, each small group (of which there are several kinds) is likely to be made up of students from a variety of majors.
The class has generally met each week in the fifteen-week semester, usually on Thursday nights from 7 pm until 9:40 pm. From now on, Dr. Robinson, who has just retired, will only be offering a three-week intensive version of Psychology 303 in SSU's Intersession, in August and January.
During winter and summer intersessions the 303 runs for three weeks in a row, the class meets daily, each weekday evening from 5 to 8 pm, 7 to 9:40 pm or in the afternoons from 1 to 4 pm. As you can imagine, this means intense concentration and heavy reading, activity, and production loads each day and each week.
The effect of being an intensive is often similar to “immersion” language learning, during which the long time periods daily can intensify among the participants language learning and comfort. In this intensive version of 303, learning experiences appear to intensify feelings of interest, productivity, safety and bonding, creativity, intense learning, and multi-disciplinary synthesis.
As an interdisciplinary psychology class and learning community, we teach this broad mixture of students and majors partly with the hopes that students in each major can learn thinking, perspective, and response patterns from the students with other majors. Perhaps all can benefit from the experience increased bonding as a learning community and using a multi-disciplinary “lens” to search for multi-disciplinary psychology and life meaning.
Kylee: The Person in Society class at Sonoma State has been an academic experience that I will never forget. It was a class that meant so much to me, because it focused on building the person as a whole. Most classes focus on a specific aspect of a specific academic subject, but Person in Society took a multidisciplinary approach to helping us realize our place in the world.
Learning communities
For the Fall 08 CampusMovieFest, the teacher and T.A.s of 303 developed a three minute film, A Future, which features teaching interns and contains appearances by the whole class on the quad and by the duck pond. “A Future” is shown on the CampusMovieFest website: www.campusmoviefest.com (Directions for that website: On the first webpage click on Movies; on the resulting second web page click on Search for Movies; on the third resulting webpage write in the white box: “A Future”; on the fourth webpage, which shows the title, press to start. Movie is silent for perhaps 20 seconds of titles then music begins.)
Most often learning communities meet for extended time together as a class. During the semester version, 303 met for about three hours in a row once a week for the semester. (The Intersession version meets for three hours daily.) The three hours gives time for the community to build and for ideas to go through multiple disciplines for clarification.
Learning communities also tend to lead to increased understanding of and empathy for classmates. This can be joined with a more complex interweaving of issues studied. This combination can lead to deeper, more lasting understanding. Even if the class has a disciplinary core, it is common for learning communities to have multi-disciplinary subject matter. Commonly, learning community teachers see themselves as co-learners with the students and, in more participatory classes, see students as co-teachers in their emerging dialogue in class. This is applied both to the class-members individually and as a whole and to teaching assistants and teaching interns.
It is common to find any number of group-based learning experiences in a learning community, such as the particularly defined set of focused small groups we use in class. An example is the small group in which the group members work together, each developing an individual essay topic in talks together and planning and writing it in dialogue and support with the others.
Learning communities often work on multi-subject academic studies (inner study, study of our outside world (through case studies), studies of meaning, studies of how the mind works, studies of intuition and spirit. Learning communities may also include some adventure. One for Fall 08 303 was a class gathering on the university’s main quadrangle, being filmed doing one-to-one dialogue, then, as it grew dusk, walking over to be with the ducks at the duck pond. These experiences were being filmed as part of a class movie being filmed. Filming lasted at the duck pond with the ducks after the sun went down.
In some cases, student teaching assistants, student teaching interns, and student "convenors" serve as class-member mentors, small group facilitators, co-teachers, administrators, technology people, and researchers.
Patrick: Learning Communities: I must admit that this class was my first real experience with the concept of learning communities in the context of a university class, both as a student and teaching assistant. Over time, I’d become jaded to the idea of group work because often the strongest students would shoulder the bulk of the work while those less motivated would in effect be subsidized. So, I found myself incredibly hesitant during the first couple class sessions as a student in 303 during the learning communities portion of the class. Quickly though, I realized that a sincere collaboration was taking place, facilitated by the guidance of Skip and our T.A. My group members and I engaged in substantive discussions on the class readings, our essays, projects and ultimately the portfolios. Rather than detracting from the classroom experience, as I had come to expect from “group work”, the time spent with our learning communities added value and an intellectual richness that was profoundly rewarding. After transitioning from student to teaching assistant, my commitment to the learning community model has only increased.
Students who might have been lost in the sea of 68 faces now have a relatively small group of peers and one or more TA facilitators with whom they have contact at least once per class period. During LC sessions, the disadvantages of a large class dissolve away as the students sit in a circle and share their work and personal experiences in a supportive environment. It has been my experience as a TA that my role of facilitator is to spark discussion, keep the discussion on topic (though some deviation can be interesting and productive), and ensure a degree of equity so that less gregarious students remain involved and are heard. More often than not, those members of the LC that were initially reserved become fully engaged in the process well before the end of the semester – which mirrors my own experience as a student. Additionally, it should be noted that many lasting friendships are created in the LC sessions that flourish well beyond the confines of the classroom and the semester-long class. The level of trust required to share works in progress and personal life stories combines with the thrill of unabashed creativity and academic freedom to foster very meaningful interpersonal relationships within the learning communities.
Freda: Intentional Learning Community: “An experimental laboratory testing the viability of living by humanistic principles - seeking to create attachment and involvement among persons who have not been spontaneously linked that focuses on the facilitation of inner directed growth, advocating for greater flexibility in the students curriculum to self-elect more personally meaningful goals.”
I think it would be helpful to discuss the idea of building and experimenting with intentional learning communities, maybe even bringing something from Carl Rodgers on the first night. With this preface, students will consciously be able to contrast the different learning environments.
The two most valuable pieces to me from my class experiences during intersession was the closeness I felt with my peers that cultivated open relationships in which to learn from one another. The other was the personal growth that resulted from this process because of the sharing of ideas.
I also think a question pertaining to the learning community style of education should be included in the surveys we do. I wonder if students would contemplate the difference in the styles of learning if it is not explained to them. I would like to think so, but my guess is, no. My hope is that some of the early semester confusion can be redirected by clarification of anticipated learning styles.
Connections to the field of psychology
In the 60’s and on forward, humanistic, transpersonal, existential, depth, somatic and Gestalt psychology combined with the expansive and inclusive thinking of the times to form a new and expanding whole, a Third Force in psychology. (Transpersonal itself is often called the Fourth Force.)
Abraham Maslow expressed the times in Toward A Psychology of Being and The Future Reaches of Mankind. Expanding this initiative were such works as Sidney Jourard,Transparent Self; Virginia Satir, Conjoint Family Therapy); Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person; Rollo May, editor, Existential Psychology; Fritz Perls, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim; Joanna Macy in Thinking Like a Mountain. The growing list of important works at that time opened up the future.
Over the decades, often through the human potential movement, these emerged areas grew strongly, affecting the coming into being and maturation over the intervening years of over 20 distinct and important schools of psychology around the U.S., in Europe, and Asia. This multi-faceted movement supported the development, in cross-pollination through such eco-initiatives as the Deep Ecology movement, of ecopsychology. Systems thinking emerged within and between movements. These successful orientations worked as precursors for the positive psychology movement. They also stimulated the reconnection of psychology to creativity and the arts. The Council on Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology has listed the growing fields.
Along with its other work, our Psychology 303 “Person in Society” class looks at such humanistic and transpersonal psychology pioneers as Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Sidney Jourard, brain science researcher Daniel Goleman, as well as, some semesters, Deep Ecologist, systems thinker, and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy, plus Erik Erikson in his stages of human lifecycle development. The course adds critical multi-disciplinary perspective by studying President and Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore, Natalie Goldberg, the ancient Persian poet Jellaudin Rumi, Father Thomas Berry, and His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama.
Connections to schools of psychology
Practically, important schools of psychology which we regularly bring up and use in our section of 303 are humanistic, transpersonal, existential, gestalt, eco-psychology, spiritual psychology, psychology and the arts, psychology of conflict resolution, cognitive psychology, organization development, positive psychology, and small group process.
Freda: Connection to the field of psychology.: The SSU Psychology Department offers numerous occasions for extraordinary classroom experiences that I am certain are special to this University, because of the Psychology Department’s Humanistic focus. This class is a wonderful opportunity to investigate and deeply explore, for instance, the ideas of Carl Rodgers and Rollo May. It reminds me of the study of children doing artwork for candy or for the simple pleasure of the creating a masterpiece. When one is asked to simply explore a passion with creative abandon, the quality of work will inevitably be far greater.
Connections to the field of interdisciplinary psychology
Psychology functions in profound forms in many other fields. Here are some examples:
Exemplars and resources
Dr. Martin Buber – I-it; I-Thou – We teach it as one of the primary measures of the relationships between people (the person in society) and as a crux point toward the resolution of conflict.
H.H. The Dalai Lama – We teach co-arising, intuition, compassion and communication (a critical part of emotional development).
Dr. Roger Fischer and Bill Lincoln – Harvard-based, Dr. Fisher and Tacoma-based Bill Lincoln teach and use a person-centered, needs-based conflict resolution model (rooted in thier interpretation of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs). We teach several of the fundamentals.
Natalie Goldberg – We treat Ms. Goldberg’s autobiography, The Long Quiet Highway – Waking Up in America, as a case study of the developing inner life we value in psychological development. She examines and significantly deepens her own inner life over time. This is the highest rated book in class, semester after semester.
Vice President (and who won the election for President) and Nobel Prize-Winner Al Gore – We help students develop a meta-analysis case study of Mr. Gore’s development and the local and global eco-crisis, focusing on global warming, and developing social action in response – in light of eco-psychology and deep ecology.
Father Thomas Barry, a Catholic, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist – We have students read two short essays in conjunction with Inconvenient Truth to explore ways upon which an ecologically sound, peaceful, sustainable future may be built.
These statements lead us, combined with Dr. Martin Buber, a Jew, and his concept of the potential holiness of relationships, plus Jellaudin Rumi, an ancient Sufi Muslim, in his quest for the point of our oneness and our Oneness.
Connections to the field of interdisciplinary study
An interdisciplinary subject is one the roots of which cross multiple academic disciplines. They can be areas of intense study (often in pursuit of particularly important ideas), vantage points which can improve and broaden the angles of light on your subject at hand, which aids in bringing that subject into clearer and more dimensional view. This class seeks to consider its subjects of study in this wider focus.
This is particularly valuable given that HALF of the large class is consistently from a wide variety of other disciplines.
Psychology is one discipline with critically valuable dialogues going on with such other academic and research areas as medicine, brain research, biology, genetics, economics, visual art, poetry, literature, drama, sociology, kinesiology, anthropology, business, communication studies, education, computer science, music, public policy, journalism, conflict resolution studies, theology. Each subject can help shed light on the others. Each can provide a widening range of evidence on what is being studied. It looks at weaving everything together. In such an environment, the study of the Person in Society can become intense, even life-changing.
At a practical level, this course’s readings, films, and discussions bring up a potpourri of clinical psychologists, theologians (including writing from five religious traditions), deep ecologists, a geneticist, an art historian, artists, writers, brain researchers, theoreticians, three mystics (one coming from Islam, one from Judaism, one from Christianity). Even systems thinking becomes one broad way to understand the complexity. Near the semester’s end, the class semester draws toward an overall synthesis, conclusions which involve the whole brain.
Four primary academic themes for the semester
The chart below shows in brief the four main foci for the class’ semester. Students are encouraged to explore how the four connect and synergize.
Kylee: Students are able to learn more than just about a distant subject, but are able to connect with themselves and their world in a way that school does not always allow. Person in Society helps build life skills and a deeper self-love in the students that learn from it.
The following chart is presented on the front cover of the semester syllabus, as follows:
ABOVE
Rumi, Open Secret
Mystical intuition and expression, poetry,
transpersonal actualization, mystic Laurie Anderson
INSIDE OUTSIDE
Goldberg, Long Quiet Highway Gore, Inconvenient Truth
Inner exploring as case study Outer exploring – global
Self –actualization and local case study
Writing Down the Bones on the eco-crisis, one-to-ones
Rumi here too; Gore and Macy too Joanna Macy, The Great Turning
BELOW
(Under the hood)
Goleman, Social Intelligence
Robinson, Points Around a Circle of Human Needs
(Maslow expanded, HHDL, Fr. Thomas Berry
“Case study” small groups - Each student chooses one of the four foci for special study individually and in a case study group. The groups work on and off throughout the semester. During the last working night of the class for the semester, each of the four groups presents their reality and exhortation to the rest of the class, a final reinforcement of the net between them.
The four case study group reports form the next to final study activity of the course. The last academic step is a group “fishbowl” to finally explore their connection and meaning. A 303 fishbowl puts a small group of volunteer class participants and staff to explore how our studies connect with each other.
Looked at another way, this work translates into a number of important sub-categories:
Inner
• Personally needed understanding: Awakening more to experience personal life meaning in oneself as an inner case study of Natalie Goldberg’s life. The Long Quiet Highway – Coming Awake in America – Natalie Goldberg.
• Cycles of individual human needs (and as they affect human relationships): “Five Points Around a Circle of Human Needs” – Skip Robinson Ph.D.
Outer
• Cycles of individual human needs have a fundamentally important outside dimension. and, in the next step, with others – works as an inner and outer case study.
• Socially needed understanding: Social Intelligence is a “multiple case” study.
How we as individuals relate to the social sphere opens up in Dr. Daniel Goleman’s review of recent research on how the brain and its chemistry impact our social relations. We will study selected pages at home, in large group, and in Social Intelligence case study.• Species-needed understanding – Earth eco-crisis as a case study: An Inconvenient Truth - Understanding through case study global warming and the ecological mega-crisis – The film plus the book underscore the nature of the problems – and some potential solutions. They also focus on the phenomenon of humans in action together to respond to this world and local eco-crisis –Nobel Prize Winner and President Albert Gore, Father Thomas Berry, Joanna Macy Ph.D.: His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In addition to reading, thought, and discussion, an eco crisis case study group will meet through the semester
• Cycles of individual human needs (and as they affect human relationships): “Five Points Around a Circle of Human Needs” – Skip Robinson Ph.D.
Above
• Perspectives opening and broadening in from the ancient past toward us about life meaning, the meaning of moments, and the interpretation of events: Ancient (from about the 1200s A.D.) Persian Islamic Sufi mystic poet Jallaludin Rumi, Open Secret , versions by Coleman Barks. His poetry forms a case study of how to explore there.
Below
• Human relationships: New fundamental understandings in Social Intelligence – Daniel Goleman Ph.D.
• Opening into the past
Primarily with film, the class traces human roots from Africa 50,000 years ago, to the Venus of Mittendorf, to 35,000 year old Lasceau and the French cave art, to the human break into the new world around 15,000 years ago, to Turkey’s 10,000 year old Gebegle Teppe monuments, to 3000 year old art and to its impact now and forward.
Connection to the earth and its woes and glories
This section of 303 attempts to integrate study of the quest for oneself to the crisis of the earth and these into the study of psychology at this time in human history. Nobel Prize Winner and President Al Gore takes us through a case study of how humans join together to fight the ecological disasters which are threatening human society and life on earth.
In these times, living on earth consciously requires experiencing earth-wide woes. The Outer study area focuses first on Al Gore’s Academy Award winning film, An Inconvenient Truth. In large group and small groups, the class talks about the film, the danger, the human response “in society”. We as a class see how one man organizes an effective world-wide road show to promote work on global warming, as a case study about how to fight back. The Outer case study group carries such work farther. This becomes part of the synthesis toward the end of the semester. At the same time, each life is capable of experiencing the glory in each moment of life. Natalie Goldman’s book, Long Quiet Highway, gives us her perception of her deeply lived life process. The study of humanistic, transpersonal, existential + psychologies can add to openness. The class’ one-to-one and small group activity can increase the pleasure and value of human contact. The class, its activities, and its readings tend to balance thinking and feeling, spread among four broad areas, fed by threads of mysticism and neuroscience. This has been a course in psychology. Human feelings – the highs, the lows, and why – are of the essence of study.
Reading
(The list below is of the January 09 intensive and the Spring 09 semester– Previously all six books were required.
All six are relatively inexpensive paperbacks (often in used condition). Now the requirement for number of books is down to four. (This is partly to try to lower student book expense as much as possible.)
Three required reading books:
• Natalie Goldberg, Long Quiet Highway;
• Daniel Goleman, sections from Social Intelligence; and
• excerpts from Jallaudin Rumi, Open Secret
Students pick one additional book for study:
Creative writing option: Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones;
Eco option: Al Gore, Inconvenient Truth; Conflict resolution option: Skip Robinson, excerpts from Points Around a Circle of Human NeedsFreda: Books: I really enjoyed Social Intelligence and Bones. The SI text helped me to understand a number of unconscious processes. I am particularly interested in the area because of my work with non-verbal individuals. Since I find people endlessly fascinating, this was a natural extension of that desire to become more aware of the reciprocal influence that we share. Learning more about the dance we all do is so important. A sometimes synchronous dance that leaves us feeling fulfilled and sometimes leaves us empty. I also thought Points Around a Circle… should be touched on more toward the beginning, if possible. At least some of it could be added to the website if the cost of copies is too much. I would like to see students comment on the articles on the web. An Inconvenient Truth could be dropped as a book. The class could just spend a night watching the film and discussing it.
Social Intelligence
In fall 2007, the class added Daniel Goleman Ph.D.’s Social Intelligence, as a required book to read. The class has worked with that book as required reading with class students in the Winter Intersession plus Spring and Fall Semester 2008 classes. It seems to really excite a significant number of the students. Some say it is the best book they’ve ever studied. In brief, we work with such of his research areas in social intelligence as webs of attachment, looping, I-it/I-Thou (from Dr. Martin Buber), a dark triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy), high and low roads (newer and more ancient levels) within the working brain, brain levels, neural networks, functions of particular cells, the development of altruism – reflecting them all toward the person in society.
303 major use of groups
The selesterl-long class met at night, 7 pm until almost 10 pm. The class was always heterogeneous, with half the students there from Psychology and half there from approximately a dozen different academic disciplines, most seeking General Education credits. Many if not most of the students worked. All in all, this was not the description of a class that should rely on lecture for almost three hours. Far from it. (A similar case can be made for the intensive version.)
Our typical 303 class has had a number of different group styles which they participate actively in. Lecture time is limited to especially important concepts and process issues. During the evening, groups vary in size from 2, 5, 8, 12, to 68, no groups going much more than a half hour, so there are a variety of opportunities for personal and intellectual dialogue, with significant and varied time also for getting to know and “bonding” with classmates. Classes usually start with dialogues among members of the class paired off into twos. The class has about a half hour of “essay” groups or “project” groups (according to the earlier or later stage of the semester) made up of about a half dozen members discussing their planning. They may make a choice and join one of four groups which meet periodically through the semester studying a particular case study tied to one of the class’ main goals. They will attend their choice among T.A. groups about related subjects they choose among.
Our class gets consistently very high ratings from students. We think this group approach is a reason why.
You can see this class as a large group class run primarily in small groups.
Inner work – the foundation
Each student is challenged to explore his or her inner self and inner resources. The class reads the autobiography of writer, teacher of writing, philosopher, and spiritual student Natalie Goldberg. It is a fundamental pillar of the course. They all learn more about their insides, in large and small group discussion, as well as in writing, and the experience of reading evocative growth and actualization.
Kylee: The class was a large group that would not normally be conducive to building a closer relationship with yourself and society, but the Professor and TA’s were able to break the class up in different ways to make it seem much smaller. We had TA groups and multiple small group discussions so that we were able to interact with different members in our class and share our more personal findings with them. We even had a one to one interaction with a different member of the class every meeting so that we could know everyone in the class a little better beyond the smaller groups. These different groups facilitated our connection with the larger group, which made our large group seem much more manageable. The class used different mediums to allow for better understandings of our inner workings and personal growth. Some were more introspective like journaling, while films focused on Humanity on a larger scale. The different modes of learning helped me learn about my place and the wonder of Humanity.
Freda: “Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of your experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together in that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you!” John Gardner.
•1-to-1s
One to one groups occur almost every class period. Students pick someone in class who they don’t know. They are charged with the work of active/empathetic/compassionate listening (described by Carl Rogers) and transparent speaking (described by Dr. Sidney Jourard). One speaks about a subject for five minutes while the other listens. Then they switch roles.
Topics are chosen based on key issues coming up in their study or in passionate ferment on campus, such as sadnesses from childhood, major transitions in coming to college, election fever, what really is one’s own long quiet highway.
•“Essay” groups - 4-6 students
All students formed into self-chosen small groups which focused on each student developing a major essay due about a third of the way through the semester. Students in one's small essay group were instrumental in each student's thinking, planning, and production.
Freda: Essay/project groups were brilliant. This should remain the focus in the first part of the semester. The connections created during this process were unique to this course and my four year college experience. As long as I remained on campus I felt connected to the diverse group of students that I came to know in those three and a half weeks. Because our past experiences were so diverse I had the opportunity to learn from a re-entry student from the Northern Africa that struggled to make it to class in between her three jobs, a forthright theater major who inspired me with her passion for speaking the truth about the state of our planet, a 19 year old that is far wiser than her years who quotes Hemingway, and one of the strongest young women I have ever met. A woman that could stand her grand on the volleyball court and in the classroom. Questioning and sharing without reservation, demonstrating a desire to understand who she is and where she fits in the world. This supportive process builds the confidence of the student thus encouraging the free exchange of new ideas and opinions. Carrying this process throughout the semester by utilizing the structure for the project as well as the project groups is instrumental in the community building process.
•“Project” groups – 4-6 students
Project groups form when the essay groups complete, when the essays are turned in. Each student has a project assignment due about two-thirds of the way through the semester. Their collaborative process is parallel to that done in essay groups. The same students populate both essay and project groups.
•T.A. groups – One or two T.A.’s facilitating a group of around 12 students average
During some semesters, Teaching Assistants form their own groups to lead students in subject study special to them.
Freda: TA groups: First I want to mention a new book by Paul Loeb that could be considered as part of the reading list. The title is The Impossible Will Take a While. I am big on the power of narrative in resurrecting optimism. I founds that this book did a wonderful ljob in pulling this off. In addition to wonderful stories, there is a website available that offers discussion questions that are linked to the reading. I wonder if they would be useful to the TA’s? One of my concerns about the TA groups was that our discussions were not challenging the thinking of the students. I would really like to see them leaving the class believing that they have the power to be catalysts for change, perhaps, even influencing the students to change majors toward community service occupations. To repeat my ideas about the structure of the groups: Individual learning contracts should be completed on the first night of class in the established TA groups that are randomly assigned. It is my opinion that there should be a random assignment of students to encourage the most interesting mix of TA groups, and a true experiment!
Freda: TA groups: The members of each group need to be FIXED and Set on the first night in order to keep it random. Topics more closely linked to the reading as to determine actual reading of the material by students.
•Case Study Groups
Patrick: Case Study Groups: The case study groups are a case in point for what can happen when the excitement to explore and learn become more important than the accumulation of points. This is a beautiful thing. As a first semester TA, I never expected the students to work as hard and as willingly and diligently as they did towards a communal project that has essentially no effect on their grade. It speaks I think to what is possible when students are invited and encouraged to be more than just bystanders in the learning process. They choose their group and then participate in the visioning process for what the final product will be, with essentially full control over the whole process. As a TA I found myself guiding, prodding, and organizing, but never mandating. It was pleasure to watch the students take ownership of the process, and I think the end result speaks for itself. The group (eco) developed a digital slide show of cumulative environmental impacts, individually wrote and presented one to three page essays on an environmental topic and assembled a packet of environmental information - again, for no points. I strongly believe that the case study group experience is the clearest manifestation of how 303 can transcend the “typical” classroom experience.
Freda: Case study groups: This was a wonderful addition in intersession and spring semester. I loved watching the students embrace the task without the promise reward. It was the true passion for the subject matter that motivated my students to go beyond the text and learn from other sources about the material. I had twelve students work together to create a presentation that demonstrated their enthusiasm for the material, each of them feeding off of the other’s passion, and desire to create a something representative of the value of the material.
Movie small groups
For the last three years, this section of 303 has strongly encouraged class members to enter the annual CampusFilmFest, held each year on one week in late September. The Fest encourages students and faculty to express themselves on digital film. Note that this is a method which is inherently multi-disciplinary. The program provides a loan of equipment (new Mac laptops loaded with iMovie, tripods, digital cameras) and expertise which is available each day of the week. It then gives students and faculty exactly one week to make their own original short film (less than five minutes). Our section of 303 shows the results of classmate work in class It also gives full project credit for the student film crew in the class’ project category.
In Fall Semester 2008, T.A. group members and Dr. Robinson made a film of their own, including all class members, and featuring two T.A.s, (Teaching Interns Sara Kaufman and Julia Tagliarini) improvising how life might feel in a future without war. Two other T.A.’s provided the film's technical assistance.
•Large group (whole class) – averaging 50-60
The large group (the whole class) meets to begin each meeting, then weaves back and forth over the three hours with various kinds of small group meetings and films in an agenda which does not usually exceed 30 minutes per setting. This is also the setting for Dr. Robinson to provide mini-lectures on key class concepts (such as Maslow's hierarchy of needs and Rumi's perspective on meaning).
During the Spring 09 semester, Teaching Intern Brian Cooper taught a seminar on psychology and comedy in four one-hour sessions.
Critically Important Role of Teaching Assistants, Teaching Interns (T.A.s), and "Convenors"
T.A.s play critically important roles in every class and every curriculum planning session. They are chosen from outstanding students in a 303 class. Some have chosen to take on increasing roles during multiple semesters. They usually earn upper division Psychology 482 and 483 credit for their work.
Approximately five to six teaching assistants and teaching interns work in each semester-long 303 class; one to three work in each Intersession intensive.
The T.A. group meets as a small group with Dr. Robinson to consider issues and go over class plans. Typical is every Thursday evening for an hour or an hour-and-a-half (5:30 to 7 or 6 to 7pm) fine tuning the planning for that Thursday evening’s class and discussing learning issues which have arisen. Typically, T.A.s in Intersession intensives meet an hour before class.
During class (7-9:40 pm) they lead their own small groups which have been consistently rated by 303 students as the most valuable part of class), speak to the whole class, organize or facilitate group meetings, do walk-around consulting during other kinds of small groups, help decide on-the-spot decisions which have to be made, and co-evaluate student projects.
Between classes, the T.A. group co-evaluates major student essays and student semester portfolios and participates in setting student evaluations for the semester, with Dr. Robinson.
In Spring Semester 09, Dr. Robinson was asked at the last minute to field an extra section of 303. No T.A.s had been recruited. One senior Teaching Intern, Patrick Eidman, offered to join. With a class of 68, Robinson and Eidman came up with a novel idea: Recruit the number of students necessary to facilitate the small group work, to be called "Convenors" of the small groups. The proper number of class students, each outstanding, applied. In short, this method worked so well that the concept can be considered for the future.
Kylee: I had the unique experience of being not only a student but a teaching assistant for the Person in Society class following my semester as a student. I loved experiencing the class as a facilitated endeavor when I was a student, but I got even more when I was helping facilitate it to other students. We were able to work together and gain more inner knowledge through group processing. It was also fun to help the students figure out how to gain deeper understanding of their place in society through their projects and essays.
Appendices
Research
Mid Semester and End of Semester Evaluations - students evaluated the class, suing a Likert scale. They each evaluated about 14 facets of class operations.
303 has developed and administered (mid-semester and end-of-semester) an “Assessment of Class Processes” questionnaire which asks student opinions about their 303 experience. This is done by focus on major aspects of the course. The questionnaire used seven-point Likert Scales, also known as “semantic differentials”, to show class participant opinion to rate the course aspects, either positive or negative, and by how much. 83% of class attendees completed the questionnaires. The Spring 08 questionnaire seven-point Likert Scale outcomes are shown (click on the hypertext above). University standard “SETE” semester-end five-point Likert Scales will be added later to show students evaluation of various teacher and class qualities.
Of the 68 students in Spring 08 class, only a few students reported on the questionnaire that they didn’t value the class. Two in particular. (I’m sorry that we didn’t find ways to engage them more.) The large majority of class consistently reported that each of the listed aspects of the class had proved to be valuable or top value.
CLASS MEETING TRANSCRIPTS
Written transcription of the audio of much of the fifteen weeks of class large group sessions in Spring Semester 2008 (from university-hired transcriber for a student with serious hearing limitations). click the link to download .doc file
Transcript-2 | Transcript-3 | Transcript-4 | Transcript-5 | Transcript-6 |Transcript-7 | Transcript-8 | Transcript-9 | Transcript-10 | Transcript-11 | Transcript-12 | Transcript-13 | Transcript-14 | Transcript-15
Writing
Patrick: Writing: The writing portion of the class is so integral to the learning process that I find myself wishing we had more time for it. I remember so vividly the night of the poetry workshop – it was, for me, perhaps the most profound and memorable aspect of the class. The silence of the classroom, pencils against paper the only noise – remarkable! I’m using Goldberg’s free writing exercises in my case study group this semester and there is palpable excitement amongst the students as we explore the idea of a “person in society” via the written word. I’m including the students at every step of the process, from creating prompts to the writing process to how we share our results. It speaks to the effectiveness of the method when there is competition to read what are often very personal stories in front of the group. Even students who wouldn’t classify themselves as “writers” enjoy the idea of freeing themselves from grammar and spelling and citations to just write - to be creative and explore issues that they might otherwise not.
Students produce a weekly journal, a major essay, poetry and responses to Rumi poetry, and other writing and art.
Syllabus
The 303 syllabus is intended to be a reasonably simple and clear guide to how students can successfully and strongly benefit from the course. It lists both subject matter and process and tries to go briefly but systematically over the issues in which students will be most interested. At a later time, a recent syllabus will be included in the Appendix of this writing.
Attendance
Patrick: Attendance: Perhaps more than anything else in the class I struggle with how to best address the issue of attendance. It goes without saying that the students need to be present to get the most out of the class, but I wonder if mandating attendance with the requisite punishments for non-attendance is the best way to accomplish the end goal. I think the burden should actually fall on us, the teaching team (Skip and TA’s) to make sure the class is interesting and relevant enough that people will want to attend out of a desire to participate in the unique learning process rather than out of fear of a draconian attendance policy. Attendance can certainly be used as a quantitative measure of participation (which accounts for 20% of the grade), but in my mind it should end there. The goal should be engaged students, actively participating in their own and contributing to their peers’ learning. I actually shudder when I see the roll sheet making its way around the room because it seems so contradictory to what this class is about otherwise. It feels ordinary and expected, when 303 is anything but.
Class website
Most semesters, the class produces a class website and puts introductions, comments, their essays, photos and other things to share with the other students. This tends to build comraderie in the group. This has been done on Facebook.
Freda: Website: I think the additional task of introducing themselves on the web page would be a positive addition to the community building process. I envision adding a picture, basic information, and a favorite quote. Possibly info as to why they registered for the course and what they are passionate about. 10-15 points.. 5 points for registering and introducing yourself automatically.
Terms At certain points in the semester, the class considers those “terms” most pertinent to them. This often builds to 40-50 terms. Then, each student is to pick 15 terms from class and defines them carefully - student definitions – can link to past definitions found on 303 class website archives.
“Intelligent classroom” capacities and how used
The university's investment in "intelligent classrooms" makes a significant difference in what can be done during class. It enhances the learning in a number of ways.
303 uses Adlai Stevenson Hall 3076, 3082, and 3008. Each has a mounted on-line computer which can click into to websites at will. It can play DVDs and VHS tapes. It can host student movies. It reaches both Windows and Mac OS.
The rooms have huge projection screens to show what the computer has found and high fidelity speakers in different parts of the room to make sure all students can hear.
With this capacity, the class can be working in small groups, turn to a short film, then back to its discussion.
In brief, this section of Psychology 303 has provided an interdisciplinary framework in which its students, from over a dozen different academic departments can develop a broader framework for their study, integration, and action.
Important Essays
To read the full essays listed below click the link to download .doc file
CJ Morden "Four Directions in One Person"
CJ describes how the four priorities of the class integrate into one.
Outstanding studend essays on The Long Quiet Highway.
Each of these four outstanding students in the Spring 09 303 class shows how their lives and Natalie Goldberg's life meaning intersect
Psychology Across the Curriculum for
Interdisciplinary Learning in the Sciences
Skip Robinson Ph.D.
Begun in 1996 at a National Science Foundation two-summer seminar on learning communities in the sciences held at The Washington Center for the Improvement of Undergratuate Education, Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington.
Introduction
We know that we and our students feel as well as think. How can needs for thinking and feeling be best integrated to improve a person’s satisfaction with the experience and to increase that person’s effective learning?
We know that different people learn best in different ways. What combination of learning contents, processes, and forms can we develop, fine-tune, and perform to optimize each student's learning - learning that will "stick"?
We know that crucial complex ideas are not naturally bound in by a single discipline. How can we help participants weave this most vivid tapestry?
We know that to meet a student in the classroom we also encounter more subtly the surface of that student's whole life and its meaning past, present, future. How can our class experience encourage the class participant's questions, quests, and passions - matters that can make the individual's life more meaningful and alive?
We know that we and our students already swim in a psychological sea. In our learning processes we consider contents and concepts even while we feel. We reflect; we weigh what is most important; we remember the past; we dream and make dream meaning; we imagine the future; we yearn to steer our learning course by means of what is most meaningful to us and pertinent to our lives. We quest. How can we best encourage the experiencing and bringing together our thought, our passions, our hopes, and our goals?
We as teachers in interdisciplinary learning environments already have begun to consider more systematically how students' own ways of motivation and learning suggest the bridges on which we can meet them.
In many ways, although we do not have psychology as one of the formal subjects we shared in the National Science Foundation interdisciplinary learning community in the sciences, "Reflections of Nature", at Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington, we are already using psychologically focused philosophies and techniques to undergird the operation of our curricula.
This paper may encourage reflection by brief reference to other "across the curriculum" work, by reviewing some psychologically important work imbedded in learning communities by their very nature, and by suggesting six areas for further consideration.
Other Subjects Across the Curriculum
"English Across the Curriculum," over its recent years of practice in the field, has proven a strong success in a wide variety of applications. Clear writing and clear reading are disciplines needed in every other discipline. Writing cogently within and about an academic discipline is naturally a cornerstone of that discipline. English curriculum people networking with those in a variety of other fields and interdisciplinary combinations over recent years have furthered writing communication skill training in a widening variety of disciplines.
Integrating math study across the curriculum makes emmanent sense and is being explored at the present time.
Under the right developments, psychologically resonant concepts and processes across the curriculum in the interdisciplinary learning of the sciences and social sciences may further deepen and integrate science learning and communication. Such study can honor how the mind works. Design content and process may be more precisely based on the broadened knowledge.
Some Characteristics of "Reflections of Nature"
and Other Learning Community Work
When several subjects are being taught under a common interdisciplinary theme, such as "Reflections of Nature," every subject deserves probing both for its own pertinence and also for its "fit" with every other subject being incorporated. How could psychology fit into and contribute to this?
Although "psychology across the curriculum" is a viable subject for study in any setting, it is doubly pertinent in a learning environment/learning community which, by its nature, integrates psychotherapeutically intriguing processes.
So much psychologically important is being tried that being more conscious of dynamics of what is happening can enrich the experience and fine-tune its foci. Some key methods with psychological ramifications already in use in learning community work in interdisciplinary study in the sciences and social sciences are
a. Cohort in common - students and teachers staying together for sufficiently ample time period of course
b. Team teaching - team learning
c. Interdisciplinary consideration of issues
d. Variety of learning environments - in, out, large group, small group, diads, single writing, observing, reading, fishbowl, teamwork
e. Co-learning - everyone in the room is understood to be a learner, including the teachers
By having students and teachers staying together for the significant period of time of the course, helpful emotional connections, even bonding, can form among the class participants. These connections aid student satisfaction, develop a "safer" environment for exploration, open opportunities for productive group project work, and improve learning in ways that group "bonding" and teamwork can further.
Team teaching and team learning permit the benefits of joint planning with its multi-person perspective, a wider exposure by the participants to different teaching styles and emphases. As the teachers explore curriculum and process in advance, they can discover together not only how the issues fit across disciplines but how the learning environment can better offer these as content and process discoveries students can make.
Because different students learn in different ways and because all students benefit from being exposed to a variety of learning settings, participant learning is increased by the variety of learning environments the teacher team develops to make the key issues more accessible - large group, small, 1-1, action projects, writing, group sharing, etc.
Finally, in terms of what is already being done, the emphasis on all people in the learning environment being co-learners (that the "teachers" are as active in their ongoing learning as the "students" are and seek to model good learning behavior) can have an exhilirating effect on participants in team-building. This allows a reduction of hierarchical structures and their implicit "turn-off" messages (I'm the teacher - listen to me, since you don't know things; remember what I say; you'll be tested). By all being co-learners, the whole room, with the right chemistry and time, becomes bonded in each person’s quest.
Six Questions in Further Considering Psychology Across the Interdisciplinary Science (and "Reflections of Nature") Curriculum
1. How do different people learn? - as individuals and in small groups. There are psychologies of learning that may prove pertinent. They deserve continuing study.
For instance, just the finding that the majority of learning takes place using the visual sense has great implications for the development and tactics of operating a learning environment. If we were to study the psychology of learning systematically and from a post-modern point of view, what would we learn to help improve the impact of these classes?
2. How do we develop a “passion-cognizant curriculum”?
Tragically, students are regularly trained to separate their lives from their schooling. When we seek to start healing this unfortunate rift, how can we help each other explore the deepest questions in one's life? How can they be brought into the curriculum?
In 1994, the learning community in Sonoma State's psychology department (a block class including Development of the Person, Humanistic/Existential/Transpersonal Psychology, and Integrative Seminar) asked participants on the first day of the first class what the deepest question(s)/quest(s) were in each participant's life. What were the questions they felt most passionately about exploring? What had the most meaning in their lives? When these had been thought about and shared with the group (to the degree each participant chose – each could also “pass”), the facilitators underscored that these questions could become the key study of each interested participant's semester. A number of learning community participants decided to do this and later reported that connecting life meaning/quests to class study were prompting a what they described as a quantum jump in their own internal motivation to learn. A quest-based/passion-based curriculum deserves exploration.
3.How do we best balance focus on thought and on feeling? Thought and feeling are both absolutely primary facets on the jewel of learning. They are as connected as the left and right sides of your body. As a parallel, using only one part at a time is a is very inefficient/ineffective, like running a two-cycle motor on only one cycle.
4. How do we integrate the individual's existential search for the meaning of this moment (for making this learning moment vibrant with meaning)? The present is really all we have yet we are often gone into the past or the future. Don’t we need to look into this question? If we only focus on what the "author" said and meant, what the "artist" painted and meant, what the "external authority" said, we leave no room for the passionate personal ferment already inside this classroom among its residents. There is a potential for exciting products from the class participants’ work.
Imagine how all this can connect with participant lives and memories.
If we grant the value of seeking ways to integrate the course subjects "out there" with the participant's own lived life "in here," then we and they benefit from the power of their own inner processes, which draw them out to share how they see and feel things. How does this reading "touch" them? What are they feeling? When participants come in the door, what are they carrying in their minds? Can we check-in daily with each other to help ground and focus the group?
During class, does the content material being scrutinized bring up feelings? vivid memories? highly pertinent life stories? What could others learn from?
How does this content relate to a participant and that participant’s life and meaning? What is really happening inside the participant right now?
One learning to communicate needs, wants, and curiosities shares his/her insides with the others, teaches, enhances bonding, connects "outer" and "inner," develops lifelong skills, and on.
After all, really, our lives are at stake in the seminar room. We need to pay attention to what we mean and how we mean it. We need to take time for this. We're working on our meanings. Life is short.
Participants learning to speak to co-participants from their depths can benefit every co-learner in the place.
5. How do we balance optimum content with optimum process?
Lecture is, of course, just one of many process options. So is cognitive discussion. When do small seminar groups or support groups come in? When 1 to 1? How is exchange among participants facilitated? How much should be planned beforehand? How much should become part of the "evolutionary" process in the class? On a practical level, we need to remember that optimal use of process can enhance content learning and connect it into the individual's own foundations.
6. How do we increase the building of “community” in a learning community? How can psychology help? Every study suggests that community-building is a hallmark of interdisciplinary learning communities with common cohorts. How can we understand and improve how the community-building takes place? In the field of psychology, the study of small group process and facilitation and the study of organizational development seem particularly pertinent areas for inquiry.
For instance, how can each participant learn basic small group process and facilitation skills? These would not only enhance the group experience during the learning community but are also exactly the kinds of skills employers around the country are clamoring for these days.
In Closing
By exploring our feelings as well as our cognition, we increase the chance we have to live our lives in the classroom, being ourselves. By learning to drop more of our facades and defenses, we free energy for exuberant learning. By being to talk about what is sparked up inside ourselves by course content and process - childhood, memories, suffering, fear, joy, the sense of the present - the classroom potentially becomes more fully alive - the curriculum more thoroughly vivid and continually in exploration.
As we consider better applying psychology across such a curriculum, if we are lucky, the science of nature in content can meet a developing science of process. Their mutual exploration can enhance both.
Living one's own life while exploring the life of nature, learning practical skills to be more often one's own authentic self with others, being with others who are learning to do the same in nature's here-and-now of a classroom: This sounds like a broad and resonant environment in which to go on the great search and to go on it together.
Jalaludin Rumi, Open Secret, Versions by John Moyne and Coleman Barks
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.