Rethinking the Way Colleges Teach Critical Thinking

by Scott K. Johnson

For the past couple years, I’ve been working as a science communicator on two fronts, as a freelance science writer and a community college Earth science instructor. I’ve seen, from many angles, the difficulty people have understanding and assessing scientific issues. With topics that are publicly contentious, those difficulties rarely arise from a simple lack of understanding. Other things get in the way. A student once said to me, “Well, I’m a conservative, so I don’t believe in climate change.” The frankness of that statement opens up a window into the obstacles science faces in the public sphere. (If only those who post internet comments were as honest with themselves…)

The combination of science writing and education has influenced my approach to both, which share a common, overarching goal: to reach out to people and present them with the power, wonder, and relevance of science. Like most educators, one of my central aims is to impart critical thinking skills— to help students make sound decisions in a confusing world of conflicting information, sales pitches, and smooth-talking politicians.
Though critical thinking is universally regarded as a pillar of higher education (including by employers seeking college graduates), results show that students are not developing their critical thinking skills to the extent we expect. For their 2009 book,Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, Richard Arum and Josipsa Rocksa followed a little over 2,300 college students through their first two years of school. They found “a barely noticeable impact on students’ skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing” and “no statistically significant gains [in these skills] for at least 45 percent of the students.”
These students may be learning things, but they’re not becoming better thinkers or writers. That’s a remarkable failure to realize the promise of a college education—and that disappointing reality actually appears to have gotten considerably worse over the last few decades. It’s irrelevant how much blame should be placed on the school and how much on the students. We must get better results.

As an educator, I’ve constantly struggled with how to stimulate growth in these skills. In an introductory Earth science course, my first job is to teach my students about plate tectonics, soil formation, oceanic and atmospheric processes, the climate system—all the things that comprise a firm foundation to build on in further classes. But the vast majority of my students will never take another Earth science course, and while this information is still useful in their lives (a point on which they may not particularly agree in the moment), there are more important things to be teaching them. There are larger points, like the nature of science and scientific thinking, and the perspective brought on by an appreciation of the complexity of Earth systems and the mind-numbing scale of the universe.
In the face of this balancing act, the traditional approach is often to simply focus on the details of a particular science (to build that foundation for prospective majors) and assume that all the students will absorb the other stuff in the process. Scientific literacy and critical thinking skills are seen as natural side-effects of studying a science. Critical thinking by osmosis.
I don’t think it reliably works that way, especially for students who expect to struggle with and be bored by science classes from the outset. It’s easy to sit through a class, memorizing some facts and working through assignments with minimal effort, without ever actually engaging with the scientific process that created this knowledge. I fear that too many of my students have done exactly that.
Increasingly, I’ve found myself addressing these big-picture, take-home points explicitly. For example, before the first box of minerals and rocks comes out of the closet, I now dedicate a couple weeks to critical thinking and the scientific method.
This progression of teaching style reached its (perhaps) natural conclusion when I realized that what I really want to do is give these students an entire semester on critical thinking and the nature of science. And why not? Why continue to pound the square peg through a round hole, herding disinterested students through “Physics for Poets” or “Rocks for Jocks” (their calculated paths of least resistance through science requirements), hoping that they’ll pick up these key skills along the way? There are many great reasons for students to experience various fields of science, but why not address critical thinking directly, as well?
This is hardly a radical thought, and I’m far from the first to think it. For decades, there have been pushes to teach these skills formally, which have ebbed and flowed with the educational tides. The Association for Informal Logic & Critical Thinking and the Foundation for Critical Thinking, for example, have long been advocating for better critical thinking instruction. Where standalone critical thinking courses exist, however, they are mostly found within the humanities and social sciences. Those courses often center on argumentation and literary criticism, or instead on the philosophy of logic, but there are opportunities to expand this— particularly by giving science a larger presence. I think there is an enormous amount of untapped value in a broader model.
I envision a course that incorporates many facets of critical thinking. Students should get an introduction to logic. They should learn a bit about cognitive science to understand some of the biases and mental shortcuts we all subconsciously employ. (How can you think at a high level without the awareness that there are wayward tendencies in your thinking machine that sometimes require troubleshooting and maintenance?) They should study some of the tools of rhetoric so they can identify the art of persuasion at work, particularly when they’re being targeted by it. And they should study the scientific method in this context, as a reliable guide through a treacherous terrain full of pitfalls and mirages.
These topics have one big thing going for them—they lend themselves very easily to an active and engaging classroom that fosters the ideal conditions for genuine learning and development. That’s a struggle in many subjects, but here it just comes naturally. Most of these concepts are best taught through application to familiar, real-world case studies. Fortunately, American culture is absolutely saturated with object lessons (Jersey Shore, anyone?) and sandboxes in which to hone skills. Student discussions absolutely beg to be facilitated—another fantastic learning environment. All students have opinions and perspectives that they bring to these issues, and the sharing and sifting of ideas among classmates should elicit the very critical thinking skills that we’re after. Few things encourage intellectual maturation like recognizing and examining the assumptions behind one’s opinions, and the course would be flush with opportunities to do so.
Take the public conflict over vaccinations, for example. Combing through the arguments of “anti-vaccine” advocates would reveal ways in which complicated information is misinterpreted and would illustrate the persuasive power of anecdotes. Digging deeper into the science strips the issue down to what we do and do not know, and how new knowledge would be acquired. Turning to the arena of public opinion, you can evaluate how others arrive at their opinions through a range of rational and emotional avenues. From there, you’re ready to put the spotlight on your own mind. How did you really form your initial opinion? Does it need to change?
If you can genuinely lead students to ponder their way through those thorny thickets, how can they not come out the other side with new eyes?
Like children who don’t notice the vegetables hidden in their favorite cheesy casserole, I think students would actually really enjoy a class like that, challenging and cognitively nutritious though it would be. It’s not hard to make this a fun and enlightening experience that sticks with students.
Contrary to the criticism that classes like this would merely be weekly exercises in debunking, critical thinking is as much about problem solving and extracting meaning from complexity as it is about not falling for hokum. (Of course, conspiracy theories and sasquatches would certainly make an appearance.) And this is where science fits in so naturally. Practice with a scientific way of thinking—developing conclusions that flow from the data, rather than cherry-picking data to support your pre-existing conclusion—adds such an important tool to the kit.
There is a need for a more inter-disciplinary alliance to bring many elements of critical thinking into one coherent experience for students. While each element is worthy of a semester-long deep-dive of its own, it’s not easy to get even a single semester with students, and I’d argue that a broad survey is the most efficient use of that time.
There are many, many factors contributing to disappointing outcomes in higher education—from changing student attitudes toward academics, to the rising tuition costs that drive students to work more while they’re in school, to problems in the K-12 education system— and there is no silver bullet that can take us were we need to go. But, as Albert Einstein recognized, “The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.” Colleges are not like the Field of Dreams (if we build it, they will think?), and it’s high time we rolled up our sleeves and got serious about making that training happen.
Related: Making implicit knowledge and skills more explicit in science education

Noam Chomsky on the Purpose of Education

by Maria Popova

On the value of cultivating the capacity to seek the significant.

In this talk based on his presentation at the Learning Without Frontiers conference in January, philosopher, linguist, and cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky — easily one of our time’s sharpest thinkers — discusses the purpose of education.
Despite the slow pace and the cheesy AfterEffects animated typography, the video is a treasure trove of insight on everything from the role of technology to the pitfalls of policy.
 

On the industrialization of education, echoing Sir Ken Robinson’s admonition about its effects on creativity:

There have been many measures taken to try to turn the educational system towards more control, more indoctrination, more vocational training, imposing a debt, which traps students and young people into a life of conformity… That’s the exact opposite of [what] traditionally comes out of The Enlightenment. And there’s a constant struggle between those. In the colleges, in the schools, do you train for passing tests, or do you train for creative inquiry?”

On technology:

Technology is basically neutral. It’s kind of like a hammer. The hammer doesn’t care whether you use it to build a house, or whether a torturer uses it to crush somebody’s skull.”

On the importance of having a framework for what matters when engaging with the the information economy — or, one might say, the essence of what great curation should be:

You can’t pursue any kind of inquiry without a relatively clear framework that’s directing your search and helping you choose what’s significant and what isn’t… If you don’t have some sort of a framework for what matters — always, of course, with the provisor that you’re willing to question it if it seems to be going in the wrong direction — if you don’t have that, exploring the Internet is just picking out the random factoids that don’t mean anything… You have to know how to evaluate, interpret, and understand… The person who wins the Nobel Prize is not the person who read the most journal articles and took the most notes on them. It’s the person who knew what to look for. And cultivating that capacity to seek what’s significant, always willing to question whether you’re on the right track — that’s what education is going to be about, whether it’s using computers and the Internet, or pencil and paper, or books.”

On influence and creating the right micro-culture to foster creativity:

It’s the way cultural progress takes place generally. Classical artists, for example, came out of a tradition of craftsmanship that was developed over long periods, with master artisans and others, and sometimes, you can rise on their shoulders and create new marvelous things. But it doesn’t come from nowhere. If there isn’t a lively cultural and educational system, which is geared towards encouraging creative exploration, independence of thought, willingness to cross frontiers, to challenge accepted beliefs… if you don’t have that, you’re not going to get the technology that could lead to economic gains.”

On the whimsy of inquiry:

Passing tests doesn’t begin to compare with searching and inquiring and pursuing topics that engage us and excite us. That’s far more significant than passing tests and, in fact, if that’s the kind of educational career you’re given the opportunity to pursue, you will remember what you discovered.”

Many of these insights, and more, are explored in depth in these 7 essential books on education.

Creativity in the 21st Century Classroom

Creativity issues in education

We want our children to develop basic literacy and numerical skills. We want them to develop a broad basis of knowledge in the sciences and the arts. We want them to develop analytical skills and good judgment. We want them to develop social and physical skills. Oh yes, we also want them to have creative skills.

When schools were called to action in the European Union’s “year of creativity” many schools focused on painting pictures, singing songs and staging shows. Of course the arts are creative. But what a shame to limit the creativity of our young people to just the arts. It is time to broaden the scope of creativity in schools and indeed in the education system.

Researchers have long since established that creative competencies are teachable and learnable. We are now living in times where more and more people are recognizing the immense value of creativity at the workplace and in life.

In the process of integrating creativity in education in practice, educators are faced with a number of key challenges:

How can we teach our own subject matter more creatively?

No mean feat. Teachers are called to go beyond the classic lecturing/examining mode to devise new ways of teaching, using tools that are different from those that they themselves experienced in their own formal learning.

How can we best teach creative method?

Creative methods take challenges that have many solutions (like most real life challenges), help define them in new ways and help invent imaginative solutions to resolve them. Creative Problem Solving, Six Thinking Hats, TRIZ, Synectics are but some of the methods available today. Schools should consider formally teaching such programs while at the same time promoting team collaboration and even doing so in partnership with companies, public organizations, communities, NGOs to help solve real world problems.

How can we develop our students’ creative skills?

Although some issues with definition and measurement of creative competencies remain, we know that it is possible and desirable to improve young people’s skills of idea fluency, flexibility, association, synthesis, as well as their critical evaluative skills. Creative competencies are probably best developed in tandem with creative problem solving methodologies.

How do we make our schools more creative?

We now know enough about organizational structures and cultures that further innovation. It is time to consciously promote innovation by fostering the systems and climates that favor creativity. A good place to begin is to mobilize teachers to creatively confront the specific challenges of their school, in addition to creatively teaching their own subject matter.

How do we make our educational system more creative?

While there are are many challenges in formalizing creative ways of teaching school subjects and in the teaching of creativity itself (methods and skills), such formalization should come high on the agenda of any educational establishment – school, community, region, state or country.

How might we best use new technology in our teaching?

As cyberspace evolves, educational institutions must ensure they are up-to-date with the technical and social aspects of new technologies so as to exploit them to further learning.

What’s stopping us?

Everybody can make a long list of creativity killers – risk aversion, fear of failure, absence of precise metrics, vested interests in the status quo, inappropriate organizational structures and more. Sometimes a reaction to what seems as a challenge to the image of the teacher as sole bearer of wisdom. Since creativity requires extended moments of non judgmental thinking, teachers who have been trained (and are expected) to judge, need to get used to deferring judgment until it is time for those extended moments of critical reasoning. Not always so easy.

After generations of learning by rote and critical thinking, bringing creativity to schools is no mean feat because it requires significant changes in mindsets and attitudes. Education changemakers need plenty of inspiration and much courage to move ahead on creativity, but the time for it is ripe, very ripe.

Note: the title, Creativity in the 21st Century Classroom, is taken from a workshop designed and facilitated by Donna Luther and Siri Lynn offered by the Creative Education Foundation at the Creative Problem Solving Institutein 2011 and 2012.

Does Wisdom Bring Happiness (or Vice Versa)?

f your life depends on the quality of your thoughts," said Marcus Aurelius. If he's right, the path to well-being is straightforward: Avoid low-quality thoughts!

The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts," said Marcus Aurelius. If he's right, the path to well-being is straightforward: Avoid low-quality thoughts!

Sadly, it's far from clear that he's right. Decades of research into the relationship between reasoning ability and well-being have failed to find a clear link. But now comes a ray of hope for high-quality thinkers--a study suggesting that Marcus Aurelius is right so long as you define "quality of thought" carefully. And the study comes with a good pedigree--it will be published in the prestigious Journal of Experimental Psychology and features the eminent psychologist Richard Nisbett among its co-authors.
What's correlated with well-being, say Nisbett, Igor Grossman, and three other authors, isn't reasoning ability in the abstract but rather "wise reasoning"--reasoning that is "pragmatic," helping us "navigate important challenges in social life."
So, for starters, how did the researchers measure wise reasoning? Subjects in this study read a series of accounts of social conflicts and Dear-Abby-like dilemmas and then, in oral interviews, were invited to discuss how the stories might unfold in the future. Their responses were rated along such dimensions as "considering the perspectives of people involved in the conflict," "recognizing uncertainty and the limits of knowledge," and "recognizing the importance of ... compromise between opposing viewpoints." These ratings were the basis for a "wise reasoning" score.

For each of the subjects a second score was calculated that was intended to measure well-being. Its components included reported satisfaction with their lives and with their social relationships and a tendency toward positive expression.

It turned out that the two scores were correlated: the wiser people were, the higher their well-being.
Three interesting wrinkles:
[1] The older you get, the stronger the correlation. Wise young adults didn't exhibit much higher well-being than unwise young adults, but wise senior citizens had considerably higher well-being than their unwise peers. (Compare the slopes of the lines in the graph above.) So if you're young, cultivating wisdom is mainly a long-term investment. (That's probably a weak sales pitch for wisdom, since young people aren't known for thinking long term. I'm tempted to say they lack the wisdom to seek wisdom, but that would mean departing from this study's definition of wisdom, so never mind.)
[2] A second age-related issue: Well-being increases with age, and so does wise reasoning. Is it possible that getting older increases well-being and wisdom independently--that the wisdom itself has no effect on well-being? After all, gray hair increases with age and so does joint stiffness, but gray hair doesn't cause joint stiffness.
Through a statistical technique that I don't claim to grasp, the authors conclude that the answer is mixed. Part of the increase in well-being associated with age is caused by growing wisdom, but part of the increase happens for some other reason. That is, wisdom, is a "partially mediating" variable between age and well-being.
[3] Another causality question: Leaving aside the age issue, how should we interpret the general correlation between wise reasoning and well-being? Assuming a causal link between these two variables, does the wisdom lead to the well-being or does the well-being lead to the wisdom?
The latter is certainly plausible. When I'm in a good mood, it's easier to consider the perspectives of other people, and easier to focus on compromise--two components of wisdom as defined here. And presumably if I were in a good mood more often--if I had an enduringly high sense of well-being--my ability to thus exercise wisdom would remain pretty high.
The authors consider this question and offer grounds for doubting that it's the well-being that causes the wisdom, but they concede that the issue isn't completely settled.
I'm guessing the answer is a little of both: Wisdom leads to well-being, and well-being paves the way for wisdom--and, in particular, for wise action, not just a capacity for wise reasoning.
If that's true, then you can imagine getting swept up in a virtuous circle: Acting wisely reduces conflict in your life and strengthens your social relationships, and this fosters a sense of well-being that makes it easier to act wisely, and so on. But there's also the vicious circle scenario--a downward spiral featuring growing unhappiness, commensurately unwise action, deeper unhappiness, and so on.
The virtuous circle scenario is certainly more appealing. And it sounds like it wouldn't be that hard. But I'm old enough to know better.

What is Deliberate Practice

 

Still curious? Learn more about deliberate practice in Talent Is Overrated and thisNew Yorker article by Dr. Atul Gawande.

You’ve probably been doing your job for a while. If you’re like most people, your performance has plateaued. Simply put, you’ve stopped getting better at what you do.

Despite repetition, most people fail to become experts at what they do, no matter how many years they spend doing it. Experience does not equate to expertise.

In field after field, when it comes to centrally important skills—stockbrokers recommending stocks, parole officers predicting recidivism, college admissions officials judging applicants—people with lots of experience were no better at their jobs than those with less experience. ^{Talent Is Overrated}

Society has always recognized extraordinary individuals whose performance is truly superior in any domain. If I were to ask you why some people excel and others don’t, you’d probably say talent and effort. These responses are either wrong, as is the case with talent, or misleading, as is the case with effort.

Conveniently, claiming that talent is the basis for success means we can absolve ourselves of our own performance (or, as the case may be, lack thereof). The talent argument, despite its popularity, is wrong. Yet research tells a very different story on how people become experts (for a more detailed argument read Talent Is Overrated, the source of most of the quotes in this article).

Research concludes that we need deliberate practice to improve performance. Unfortunately, deliberate practice isn’t something that most of us understand, let alone engage in on a daily basis. This helps explain why we can work at something for decades without really improving our performance.

Deliberate practice is hard. It hurts. But it works. More of it equals better performance and tons of it equals great performance.

Most of what we consider practice is really just playing around — we’re in our comfort zone.

When you venture off to the golf range to hit a bucket of balls what you’re really doing is having fun. You’re not getting better. Understanding the difference between fun and deliberate practice unlocks the key to improving performance.

Deliberate practice is characterized by several elements, each worth examining. It is activity designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher’s help; it can be repeated a lot; feedback on results is continuously available; it’s highly demanding mentally, whether the activity is purely intellectual, such as chess or business-related activities, or heavily physical, such as sports; and it isn’t much fun.

Let’s take a look at each of those to better understand what’s meant.

It’s designed specifically to improve performance

The word designed is key. While enjoyable, practice lacking design is play and doesn’t offer improvement.

“In some fields, especially intellectual ones such as the arts, sciences, and business, people may eventually become skilled enough to design their own practice. But anyone who thinks they’ve outgrown the benefits of a teacher’s help should at least question that view. There’s a reason why the world’s best golfers still go to teachers.”

But it’s more than just the teachers’ knowledge that helps — it’s their ability to see you in ways you can’t see yourself.

“A chess teacher is looking at the same boards as the student but can see that the student is consistently overlooking an important threat. A business coach is looking at the same situations as a manager but can see, for example, that the manager systematically fails to communicate his intentions clearly.”

In theory, with the right motivations and some expertise, you can design a practice yourself. It’s likely, however, that you wouldn’t know where to start or how to structure activities.

Expertise, as the formula goes, requires going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence and finally to unconscious competence. *

Teachers, or coaches, see what you miss and make you aware of where you’re falling short.

With or without a teacher, great performers deconstruct elements of what they do into chunks they can practice. They get better at that aspect and move on to the next.

Noel Tichy, professor at the University of Michigan business school and the former chief of General Electric’s famous management development center at Crotonville, puts the concept of practice into three zones: the comfort zone, the learning zone, and the panic zone.

Most of the time we’re practicing we’re really doing activities in our comfort zone. This doesn’t help us improve because we can already do these activities easily. On the other hand, operating in the panic zone leaves us paralyzed as the activities are too difficult and we don’t know where to start. The only way to make progress is to operate in the learning zone, which are those activities that are just out of reach.

Consider a chess tournament:

Skill improvement is likely to be minimized when facing substantially inferior opponents, because such opponents will not challenge one to exert maximal or even near-maximal effort when making tactical decisions, and problems or weaknesses in one’s play are unlikely to be exploited. At the same time, the opportunity for learning is also attenuated during matches against much strong opponents, because no amount of effort or concentration is likely to result in a positive outcome.*

It can be repeated a lot

Repetition inside the comfort zone does not equal practice. Deliberate practice requires that you should be operating in the learning zone and you should be repeating the activity a lot with feedback.

Let us briefly illustrate the difference between work and deliberate practice. During a three hour baseball game, a batter may only get 5-15 pitches (perhaps one or two relevant to a particular weakness), whereas during optimal practice of the same duration, a batter working with a dedicated pitcher has several hundred batting opportunities, where this weakness can be systematically exploited. *

It’s no coincidence that Ted Williams, baseball’s greatest hitter, would literally practice hitting until his hands bled.

Feedback on results is continuously available

Practicing something without knowing whether you are getting better is pointless. Yet that is what most of us do everyday without thinking.

“You can work on technique all you like, but if you can’t see the effects, two things will happen: You won’t get any better, and you’ll stop caring.”

Feedback gets a little tricky when someone must subjectively interpret the results. While you don’t need a coach, this can be an area they add value.

“These are the situations in which a teacher, coach, or mentor is vital for providing crucial feedback.”

It’s highly demanding mentally

Doing things we know how to do is fun and does not require a lot of effort. Deliberate practice, however, is not fun. Breaking down a task you wish to master into its constituent parts and then working on those areas systematically requires a lot of effort.

“The work is so great that it seems no one can sustain it for very long. A finding that is remarkably consistent across disciplines is that four or five hours a day seems to be the upper limit of deliberate practice, and this is frequently accomplished in sessions lasting no more than an hour to ninety minutes.”

Ben Franklin, an interesting example

Ben Franklin intuitively grasped the concept of deliberate practice. As a teenager Ben received a letter from his father saying his writing was inferior: “in elegance of expression, in method and in perspicuity, of which he convinced me by several instances,” as Franklin recalled.

“Ben responded to his father’s observations in several ways. First, he found examples of prose clearly superior to anything he could produce, a bound volume of the Spectator, the great English periodical written by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. Any of us might have done something similar. But Franklin then embarked on a remarkable program that few of us would have ever thought of.

It began with his reading a Spectator article and marking brief notes on the meaning of each sentence; a few days later he would take up the notes and try to express the meaning of each sentence in his own words. When done, he compared his essay with the original, “discovered some of my faults, and corrected them.

One of the faults he noticed was his poor vocabulary. What could he do about that? He realized that writing poetry required an extensive “stock of words” because he might need to express any given meaning in many different ways depending on the demands of rhyme or meter. So he would rewrite Spectator essays in verse. …

Franklin realized also that a key element of a good essay is its organization, so he developed a method to work on that. He would again make short notes on each sentence in an essay, but would write each note on a separate slip of paper. He would then mix up the notes and set them aside for weeks, until he had forgotten the essay. At that point he would try to put the notes in their correct order, attempt to write the essay, and then compare it with the original; again, he “discovered many faults and amended them.”

Even without a teacher, Ben Franklin grasped deliberate practice.

Inside the Coursera Contract: How an Upstart Company Might Profit From Free Courses

Jim Wilson, The New York Times, Redux

Andrew Ng, a co-founder of the company and a professor of computer science at Stanford U.: "We have a lot of white boards up around the office where these ideas are being written down and erased and written down and erased."

Enlarge Image

By Jeffrey R. Young

Coursera has been operating for only a few months, but the company has already persuaded some of the world's best-known universities to offer free courses through its online platform. Colleges that usually move at a glacial pace are rushing into deals with the upstart company. But what exactly have they signed up for? And if the courses are free, how will the company—and the universities involved—make money to sustain them?

Some clues can be found in the contract the institutions signed. The Chronicle obtained the agreement between Coursera and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the first public university to make such a deal, under a Freedom of Information Act request, and Coursera officials say that the arrangement is similar to those with the other partners.

The contract reveals that even Coursera isn't yet sure how it will bring in revenue. A section at the end of the agreement, titled "Possible Company Monetization Strategies," lists eight potential business models, including having companies sponsor courses. That means students taking a free course from Stanford University may eventually be barraged by banner ads or promotional messages. But the universities have the opportunity to veto any revenue-generating idea on a course-by-course basis, so very little is set in stone.

Andrew Ng, a co-founder of the company and a professor of computer science at Stanford, describes the list as an act of "brainstorming" rather than a set plan. "We have a lot of white boards up around the office where these ideas are being written down and erased and written down and erased," he says. Still, that brainstorm list has some surprises, including the idea of selling course content from universities to companies to use for internal training.

Coursera is following an approach popular among Silicon Valley start-ups: Build fast and worry about money later. Venture capitalists—and even two universities—have invested more than $22-million in the effort already. "Our VC's keep telling us that if you build a Web site that is changing the lives of millions of people, then the money will follow," says Daphne Koller, the company's other co-founder, who is also a professor at Stanford.

Dreaming Up a Business Model

Apparently that was enough to convince major universities that the company is viable.

"In the early days, Google never made a penny off search," says Richard A. DeMillo, director of the Georgia Institute of Technology's Center for 21st Century Universities, who participated in that university's negotiations with Coursera. "Ad-supported search was a business innovation that became feasible because of the scale of traffic going to Google. If we add value, it will draw so many people to the enterprise that things we can't do now will become doable." He figures that the eventual business model might be something that isn't even in the contract but is dreamed up later.

Officials at the University of Michigan were not immediately available for comment about their contract.

Coursera's leaders say they are actively pursuing only two of the moneymaking ideas on the list: charging students who pass the courses a small fee for a certificate, and serving as a matchmaker between students looking for jobs and companies seeking qualified employees.

Even those two ideas are works in progress, though. Mr. Ng says none of the partner colleges have decided how much they will charge for certificates, though he expects the amount to be small—what he called "tens of dollars." And the company is still studying how best to work with employers, and how much to charge. "I wish I had more to tell you," he says when pressed.

When and if money does come in, the universities will get 6 to 15 percent of the revenue, depending on how long they offer the course (and thus how long Coursera has to profit from it). The institutions will also get 20 percent of the gross profits, after accounting for costs and previous revenue paid. That means the company gets the vast majority of the cash flow.

"I suspect the margins that they're asking for is a result of throwing darts over at Coursera," jokes Mr. DeMillo of Georgia Tech.

Another detail that seems unresolved in the rush to offer free online courses is whether professors should share in the spoils. Peter Rodriguez, an associate professor and senior associate dean for degree programs at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, was involved in the university's contract negotiations with Coursera. He says that, as it stands, professors do not get a royalty from the courses, but that, "in the long run, that's possible."

Coursera claims no intellectual-property rights to the courses. The founders say that the move is a reflection of their belief that the universities should control the content completely. "One provost told us that this contract was clearly written by an academic and not by a lawyer," Ms. Koller says. "I took that as a compliment."

Arrogant Institutions?

Colleges are also not bound to work exclusively with Coursera. That means universities could suddenly take the material Coursera helped develop elsewhere. But Ms. Koller thinks the company will bring more students than the colleges can attract on their own. "You can develop your own platform, and you can put it up on your own Web site, and you will not have 740,000 students," she quips, referring to the company's current enrollment.

When I showed the Coursera contract to Trace A. Urdan, an analyst at Wells Fargo Securities who focuses on education-related companies, he found it "ironic" that major universities are embracing online education when they have been dismissive of earlier efforts by for-profit companies like the University of Phoenix.

"These are two of the most arrogant types of institutions—Silicon Valley companies intersecting with these elite academic programs," he says. "Neither of them considers that anyone else has come to this place before they've arrived. They say, We're here now, so now it's sort of legitimate and for real."

And he argues that the plan relies heavily on all of the money colleges are already spending on professors and facilities. "It's a way to carve out some extra money on the top of the existing program, but it's not an alternative system that is going to solve the cost crisis of higher education," he says. "It's being subsidized by incredibly high-priced education."

Ms. Koller insists that the courses the company is offering differ fundamentally from those at the University of Phoenix. "Their online effort is really traditional teaching mediated by the computer as opposed to using the tech in a fundamental way," she argues. "There's no economies of scale there. What we're doing is one instructor, 50,000 students. This is the way to bend the cost curves."

Among the other potential business models mentioned in the contract are:

Selling Courses to Community Colleges. The contract mentions the idea of offering the course content to community colleges that could create a customized version of the free course for their enrolled students for credit. That idea was among those discussed, in theory, during Duke University's negotiations with Coursera. Peter Lange, Duke University's provost, says he believes it would be up to Coursera to drum up such business, if it ever happens. "It's my expectation that that would be somewhat mediated by Coursera," he says. "It's not likely that we'd be going out to promote our educational outcomes to community colleges."

Charging Tuition. The contract also allows universities to offer the Coursera courses on their own campuses for credit. In that case, the university pays the company for the use of the platform, in an amount determined on a case-by-case basis. So far, the only university actively pursuing that model is the University of Washington. "We don't want to make money, we just want to be able to fund the development of the courses," says David P. Szatmary, the university's vice provost. He says Washington officials expect increased staff costs to design the courses and edit video of lectures. The university will pay the company $25 per student for those who pay tuition to take the courses.

Offering "Secure Assessments." The contract also mentions the possibility of setting up testing centers or some other service that would let students prove that they had done the work themselves. But Mr. Ng says that their initial research has shown less interest in that option than originally thought. "That's not the direction we're really moving right now," he says. "It would be naïve to think that cheating never takes place, but I don't think it is a major problem so far."

College officials, for their part, seem more motivated by fear than by the promise of riches. "Most of us are thinking this could be a loss of revenue source if we don't learn how to do it well," says Mr. Rodriguez, of the University of Virginia. "These are high-quality potential substitutes for some of what universities do."

The Failure of Grades

By Peter Kaufman
I recently had to do the one thing that I dislike most about being a college professor: assign final grades. For me, giving out grades is definitely a necessary evil. I find it so frustrating that an entire semester of thinking, learning, exploring, and discussing comes down to assigning a letter or number to students. And yet, I know I must do this to keep my job. To put this in succinct sociological terms, my agency (my capability to act) is constrained by the institutional structure (the rules of the university that I must follow).
Everyone knows that grades are supposed to give us some sort of information. We also know that grades are connected to a numerical value. In this sense, we may say that grades are a statistic: a figure that is computed from a population or sample. In school, grades are generally computed from the sample of course assignments—papers, oral presentation, exams, quizzes, group projects, participation, etc.
When confronted with any statistic or set of numbers we should always feel compelled to ask two critical sociological questions: (1) What is this statistic measuring? (2) How is this statistic being used?
Many people would probably say that grades measure how smart you are. The problem with this assumption is that in most educational contexts grades only measure two types of intelligence: linguistic and logical-mathematical. According Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences there are at least five other types of intelligence: musical, bodily (kinesthetic), spatial, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. As we all know, most of these other forms of intelligence will not get you a place on the honor roll.
Basing grades on just two types of intelligence becomes especially problematic when we consider some of the other things that people think grades measure, such as self worth and potential. In our culture, the power and persuasion of grades is so strong that many students are socialized to believe that their grades in school reflect who they are and what they will become. How many times have you heard someone define a young person defined by their grades: “She’s an A student. We expect great things from her.” “He’s not that smart. He’s barely getting C’s.”
When we make the unfortunate and incorrect link between one’s grades and one’s value as a human being we are getting at the second question that we should ask about all statistics: How are they being used?
There is no doubt that grades are largely used as a sorting mechanism. In other words, they are used as a form of stratification—a way to rank and reward people. Just think: Have you ever seen a school that does not proudly display an honor role, a Dean’s list, or have some specially designated “society” (usually involving Latin words or different colored caps and gowns) for people with high GPAs? What about the students who receive average grades? How are they ever celebrated and honored?
Seeing grades as a form of stratification is a key sociological insight. The extent to which grades and the larger schooling process are used to label, sort, and track students has been an important topic of sociological analysis. Classic studies such as Jeannie Oakes’s Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality, Jay MacLeod’s Ain’t No Makin’ It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood, and Annette Lareau’s Home Advantage: Social Class and Parental Intervention in Elementary Education demonstrate how grades play a role in perpetuating inequality by pushing some students forward and keeping other students back.
So what are the alternatives? What actions can be taken either at the institutional or individual level to resist the grading system?
Some colleges and universities do not give out letter grades to students in their first semester or first year as a way to de-emphasize the pressure of grades. With this grading policy, as long as students pass the class they are assigned a grade of S (Satisfactory) or P (Pass) to indicate successful completion of the course. Other schools take this even further and use narrative evaluations instead of grades for the students’ entire education. The use of portfolio assessments is another alternative to grades that has been used in many educational settings from kindergarten through graduate school.
As individuals we can also take some measures to resist the grading system. One thing we can do is to de-socialize ourselves from the belief that grades are a measure of our self worth. This is easier said than done, but it might help to constantly remind yourself that you are not your grade, you are more than just a number and that you are a whole person.
It is also helpful to not define your learning by your grades. Just because you got a “bad grade” does not necessarily mean that you did not learn anything in a class. Too often, students may feel like all they get out of a course is the grade. As an alternative, try to leave each class and reflect on what intellectual, social, or personal insights you gained from the class regardless of the number or letter that was assigned to you.
Lastly, I would suggest that you not structure your entire educational experience around grades. Despite the prevailing sentiment that you may hear from peers, parents, and society, your sole purpose in school should not be to get a high GPA. In fact, a few years ago a study was conducted to determine what college students did to have the most enjoyable and intellectually fulfilling college experience. The book, Making the Most of College: Students Speak Their Minds, lists a number of recommendations andnone of them mention anything about focusing on grades.
I have to continue giving grades because I love being a college professor and I want to keep my job. But I know it’s not anything I will ever come to enjoy. However, there is one grade I would relish the opportunity to give out and that is to the entire grading system. I’m sure it’s no surprise that I would not hesitate to give this deeply flawed system a big fat F!