June 2013 - Diane Hamilton

A Professor’s Top 15 Book Recommendations

One of the hardest things I had to do when I moved was to get rid of some of my books. My house was starting to look like a Barnes & Noble. I kept the textbooks I use for my courses and a few others that I found especially useful or interesting. The following list is in no particular order. It contains some of my favorite books that I kept. I often recommend them to my students:

Emotional Intelligence: Why it can Matter More than IQ by Daniel Goleman – Goleman is one of the main thought-leaders in emotional intelligence. This book is easy to read and explains the importance of emotional intelligence.
The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shaw Achor – This book included some interesting information about how to be happy. I liked the author’s style. It is entertaining and interesting.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. This book is required reading in many courses. Although some students hesitate to pick up “self-help” books, this one is a classic for good reasons.
Emotional Intelligence in Action by Marcia Hughes, Bonita Patterson, James Terrell, and Reuven Bar-On. This book is a helpful tool to develop emotional intelligence in teams.
The Pig That Wants to be Eaten: 100 Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher by Julian Baggini. This strange little book was required reading for a course I taught about foresight. My technology students love it. It is filled with short stories. It is not for everyone. However, it is a book that will make you think.
Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice by Howard Gardner. Gardner’s work in multiple intelligences is an important foundation for anyone studying personality assessments.
The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done by Peter Drucker. Drucker’s book is often required in management and leadership courses.
The Bugaboo Review: A Lighthearted Guide to Exterminating Confusion about Words, Spelling and Grammar by Sue Sommer. This is a fun book to teach spelling and grammar.
Between You and I: A Little Book of Bad English by James Cochrane. This is helpful book to teach grammar.
Eats, Shoots, & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. This is another fun book to explain the importance of punctuation.
It’s Not You It’s Your Personality: Skills to Survive and Thrive in the Modern Workplace by Diane Hamilton and Toni Rothpletz. This is a book written by my daughter and me. It explains all of the top personality assessments and helps readers understand how to get along with other people at work.
The Elements of Style by William Strunk. This is a classic book on how to write correctly. Most authors keep a copy of this.
On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zessner. I like how Zessner teaches writers to write in a simple way.
The Online Student’s User Manual: Everything You Need to Know to be a Successful Online Student by Diane Hamilton. This book will help new and continuing students to be successful in online classes.
Entreleadership: 20 Years of Practical Wisdom from the Trenches by Dave Ramsey. This book contains a compilation of things that managers or entrepreneurs should know but may have never learned.

Changing the Way Students Perform Online Research

Google and other search engines have changed the way people locate information. The problem is that online students think of Google as a proper tool to use to perform research for assignments. Google Scholar may provide access to some scholarly research. However, most online schools prefer that students use the school’s library search feature. It is important that students consider the reliability of the type of content that is available on traditional websites.

Pew reported that the majority of students are not able to recognize bias in online content. This has become frustrating for professors because these skills should be taught in first-year college courses. Turnitin’s white paper titled What’s Wrong with Wikipedia, reported that in over 37 million papers submitted by students, there were 156 million matches to content found from the Internet. This means that students use sites like Google Books, May Clinic, Yahoo Answers, Wikipedia, etc. These are unacceptable sources to use for college-level courses.

According to Turnitin’s research, the following problems exist with student’s research behavior:

Problem: Students value immediacy over quality – Students use sites like Wikipedia to find quick answers. Wikipedia may offer some valuable resources at the bottom of their site to support the content. Solution: These sources are usually available through the school’s library search feature. Schools’ search engines are quite easy to use. They access some of the best material available for free. Students can easily mark a box for peer-reviewed studies. This will ensure that their research contains quality information.
Problem: Students often use cheat sites – Students may find sites that offer to write their papers for a fee. Most of these papers are captured within Turnitin’s plagiarism detecting software. Therefore when students buy the paper and submit as their own, the software will detect it as plagiarized. Solution: The time it takes to find and buy a paper on the Internet could have been used to simply write an original paper. Nothing is gained from submitted plagiarized work. Students risk getting expelled. Most assignments are not that long or difficult. The point of writing them is to gain knowledge. Students who attend school just to obtain a piece of paper will not be prepared for the working world. They will spend money on a degree that will not help them if they have not learned the information.
Problem: Research is not synonymous with search – Students may put a lot of faith in the information found on the Internet. Just because a site allows people to ask and answer questions, does not mean that the answers are correct. Searching for answers on the Internet does not mean that the answers are based on actual research. Solution: Using peer-reviewed sources that are available through the school’s library ensures that the information in the article has been reviewed by the author’s peers. These studies are actual research.

There are times when assignments allow for students to use websites like Apple.com, or other corporate or news sites. If this is allowed by the instructor, students must be able to recognize if the site is highly regarded. An example might be The New York Times. If students are in doubt, they should direct questions to their instructor for guidance.

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Advantages of Peer Interaction in Online Learning

One of the most important ways students learn in online courses is through peer-to-peer interaction. In my experience with traditional classrooms, there were far more lectures and much student involvement. The professors spoke “at us” in traditional courses. In online courses, there is more of a group discussion. Students receive the professor’s perspective as well as viewpoints from every student in the course. In my opinion, this makes for a much more interesting and interactive classroom.

Not all students are fans of lecture-based learning. MOOCs may experience high dropout rates due to their lecture-based format. According to the article MOOCs: Will Online Courses Help More Students Stay in School, “Critics of MOOCs are quick to point out their low completion rates (fewer than 7% of students complete the courses on average). They also note that the courses take the ineffective lecture format and make it the primary mode of learning.”

The types of online courses I have taught rely very little, if at all, on lectures. The courses include more peer interaction and written assignments. The peer interaction revolves around discussion questions. There are usually at least two discussion topics posted each week. Students must respond to the initial question and respond to their peers’ postings as well. This requires students to address the question, discover other students’ perspectives, and develop critical thinking skills.

Students’ responses to their peers must include substantive comments and well-constructed follow-up questions. These questions often develop the conversation and create a dialogue. Every student can see these discussions. Every student can interject their comments. It creates a pool of information that would not be provided to students in a lecture hall. It allows for much more depth to the exploration of the topic.

In a traditional course, the professor may give their insight and opinions about a topic. In an online course, this is possible as well. What is different is the amount of interaction required by the students. Granted, things may have changed since I took traditional courses in the 80’s. However, based on what I read and what I hear from my students, traditional college courses have not changed that much. I believe that is why there is such an interest in MOOCs. They add a new dimension that traditional courses have lacked. However, MOOCs may not provide the peer interaction is the same way that regular online classes can. The reason for this is due to the number of students in class. MOOCs are massive. Most online courses I teach include fewer than 20 students. When there are too many students, the discussions become overwhelming and no one takes the time to read all of the postings.

The best part of peer interaction is that students can learn from everyone’s experiences. Many online students have had decades of experience. This provides a wealth of knowledge that may be added to the professor’s perspective. This allows everyone, including the professor, to garner important insight.

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Online Student Safety and Behavioral Issues

The online classroom may make it easier for students with personality problems or even mental health issues to go undetected. It may provide a false sense of security for some students who make friends with other students who may appear to be well. However, in any online situation, it is wise to look for some behavioral signals that may indicate some problems.

I have had students who ignore netiquette, aka rules of proper behavior in the online classroom. I have had a few students who concerned me to the point that I believed, for safety reasons, I had to report them. Although I have not had this happen often, it can be frightening for innocent students who get bullied or are provoked by these behaviorally-challenged students.

I recently had a student send me a note that she felt uncomfortable by certain wording that another student used in class. She asked me to ask the student to refrain from using what she considered profanity. Although this “profanity” may have seemed very mild to some of the other students, it bothered her. It is important for students to realize that everyone may not be comfortable with certain words.

In the Wall Street Journal article When Social Skills are a Warning, the author explained that it may be important to look for social skills that may indicate a warning of behavioral issues. Instructors and fellow students might be able to detect some early signs that are symptoms of problems like social indifference, lack of empathy, and inappropriate behavior. Some students do not recognize when to “back off” in discussions. In the article, the author explained how our brains are set up differently. “Some networks act as emotional brakes and others as the gas. Everyone has a different balance of these networks, which contributes to our personalities, emotions and behaviors.”

When students notice something that makes them feel uncomfortable, they should report it to their professor or counselor. Many students are harmless and just do not realize how they may come across to others. The problem is that there have been incidents that make the news that scare people. These past tragedies may help to make people more aware of the importance of recognizing behavior.

Just because there is a computer screen between students, does not mean there is no danger. Some students connect in online chat rooms. Sometimes they exchange email and telephone numbers. Just because a student is in an online college classroom, it does not ensure that this person is harmless. In online, just as in traditional courses, there will be some students who have behavioral problems. It is important that students do not let their guard down too far due to a possible incorrect assumption that all students must be normal. I do not want to squelch the college connection experience. It is just important to remember that people may have issues whether they are in a traditional or online location. Students should be just as vigilant about their safety in an online class as they would be in any other situation.

Hiring Graduates Based on Personality Skills

HR professionals within organizations have given personality assessments to potential employees for many years. I was asked to take a personality assessment for a pharmaceutical sales job in 1987. The changes I have noticed since that time include the type and frequency of personality tests given. What also may be trending is the fact that leaders of schools have become more interested in personality assessments. In the Wall Street Journal article Business Schools Know How You Think, but How Do You Feel, author Melissa Korn explained, “Prospective MBA students need to shine by showing emotional traits like empathy, motivation, resilience, and dozens of others.” Schools may be interested in these traits because organizations value these traits. Korn also explained, “Measuring EQ-or emotional intelligence quotient-is the latest attempt by business schools to identify future stars.”

I find this trend to be particularly interesting because I teach business, I am a qualified Myers Briggs instructor, a certified EQ-i instructor, and I wrote my dissertation on the relationship between emotional intelligence and sales performance. I have also witnessed that online schools have placed more importance on personality assessments. Many of my first-year students must take a Jung-like personality test. Many of my undergraduate and graduate business students have to assess their EQ.

I think it is important for these personality preference and emotional intelligence issues to be addressed in online courses. Some of the things that may hurt a graduate’s chance of obtaining is job include having poor self-assessment skills, poor interpersonal skills, and a lack of concern for how they are perceived by others.

When I was in pharmaceutical sales, they rated us each year on our concern for impact. It was such an important part of what they believed made us successful in the field, that there were consequences to poor judgment and rude behavior. In the book, It’s Not You It’s Your Personality, there is a chapter regarding concern for impact, as well as one for Myers Briggs MBTI, Emotional Intelligence, DISC, and many other personality assessments that may help young adults in the workplace. One of the universities for which I teach requires students to read this book in a foresight course.

It is important for online students to learn about these assessments because employers use them. Some personality traits stay with us throughout our lives. The MBTI is an example of an assessment that determines preferences that may not change. This assessment may be helpful to students who are not sure about career paths. Other assessments like the EQ-i determine emotional intelligence levels. The good news about emotional intelligence is that it may be improved. Marcia Hughes has written several books about how to improve EQ in the workplace. The savvy online students will work on developing their EQ and understanding personality preferences before they graduate. By being proactive, students may have a better chance of being successful in a career that matches their personality preferences.

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