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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
Are they doing this just to pass the test or are they really digging in because they want to know because they see themselves three years from now in the field as a practitioner of it? And those are two very different approaches that are determined by the heart of the maturity level of the student. This is the Transform Your Teaching podcast.
Narrator:The Transform Your Teaching podcast is a service of
Ryan:Hello, and welcome to the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. Today, Doctor. Rob McDowell and Doctor. Jared Piles chat with two educators who have been educating young people for forty plus years. The first is Doctor.
Ryan:Chris Miller, senior professor of biblical studies, Cedarville University, and Doctor. Thomas Hutchison, professor of educational ministries and applied theology at Cedarville University. Thanks for joining us.
Rob:Thank you, Ryan. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us.
Tom Hutchison:Pleasure to be here.
Rob:Just to give our listeners some idea of where we're going with this particular conversation and ultimately around the idea of fostering student resilience. This stems from one of our episodes, our hundredth episode, where doctor Hutchison came in and asked us a question. And we've kinda wanted to dive into that a little bit more. And it had to do with your idea or your feeling that things were significantly different in terms of relationship with students, that the connection that you were used to having in that educational experience with them is significantly different now than when you first started teaching. Mhmm.
Rob:And it seemed that you were also referencing within the past five years that it's much more noticeable. Is that correct?
Tom Hutchison:Yeah. I think it is. I've mentioned earlier. I've I've taught an adult ministries class for about thirty years, and so I would look at generational differences in that class and get feedback from students. And as I would go through a description of the current generation, I'd have the students go, yes, that's a good description of us.
Tom Hutchison:You've caught it really well. And within three to four years, I'd have them going, oh, that kind of sounds like my older brother or my older sister, And you could feel the change happening. And I've been through that cycle, I think, four times now while teaching here at the university. So part of that I expect, part of that I've learned. I've learned you can't look at it and suddenly assess, Okay, this is exactly what's happening and this is where it's going to go.
Tom Hutchison:Tomographers are notoriously inaccurate. But I have learned that you then need to pay attention to it and kind of figure out where it's coming from, and with that, figure out how to respond to help the student. And so in my mind, as I've watched, it seems like it's been accelerated in this last one, and I feel like I'm having a little more of a challenge in trying to figure out what it is. And it's three different ways that I'm feeling that challenge. I'm asking myself, is it that the students are significantly different and that the change is marking them as some characteristics that are just so unusual that I'm kind of off balance trying to figure out what it is and how to respond to it?
Tom Hutchison:Or is it our approach to teaching that's changed, that's making me feel more of a distance, that I'm having to manage so much information and the technology and the process, and I'm dealing with such numbers of students and the pace of everything expected that what's happening is it's difficult for me to be as personal and build a relationship and be connected. Okay. Or in all transparency, am I reaching an age where the gap between me and this young student is getting harder and harder to bridge?
Rob:A bridge too far.
Tom Hutchison:A bridge too far. And so in the middle of that, you have the same thing. Those changes have been going on, but this one seems particularly pronounced, and it's made me just kind of back up and pause a little and ask those questions of where is it coming from and and what would be an appropriate response for me.
Rob:Doctor Miller, do you concur with his assessment? Where where are you at?
Chris Miller:It's a multifaceted question and a very good one because if we're going to teach our students and we're going to teach them where they are, you obviously have to know where they are, and that's a target that moves. And I feel like it's been moving more rapidly, accelerating more quickly in the last twenty years. The good thing about what Hutch and I have been able to experience over the last forty years is we watched an amazing change in technology. When I first started teaching, we didn't have personal computers. I remember in the early two thousands here at Cedarville, when we would have, lectureships about the effect of technology on culture and we were speculating at the time.
Chris Miller:We had some of the best minds around talking about what its effect was gonna be, but we didn't even have the iPhone yet until 02/2007. And we could not even begin to imagine TikTok, AI, the Internet, what it was gonna be like. And not only that, but what those effects would then be. And I think now we're starting to see those effects show up in the classroom in ways that are scary, and and in ways that we have to take into account and say, woah, we're this train is moving so fast now. We can't stop it.
Chris Miller:How do we adapt to it for their benefit?
Tom Hutchison:It struck me first, and this is like twenty plus years ago, we had a lecturer on campus speaking about postmodernity. And what struck me was how he was talking about how it generally in times past, if you look at your philosophy texts especially, it would take a century to a century and a half for ideas to change. They would filter down from the university, grasp at the grassroots level. And so you'd have grandparents, parents, and kids all speaking the same vocabulary with some of the same values and the same issues, that would slowly change. In the middle of his lecture, without him even noting it, he commented how he was talking about something now in the 1980s, but this was written in the 60s and it's changed dramatically since then.
Tom Hutchison:And so he was even showing that the rate of information transfer and the way it was processed was compressed and how rapidly it was changing. And so you go back before the twentieth century, the major culture shifting inventions, you know, like gunpowder, the printing press, steam engine, or the light bulb. Those you had time to absorb them
Rob:Mhmm.
Tom Hutchison:And to discuss the ethics and figure out how we're gonna get them used. Then you move to the twentieth century, and you see how rapidly that speeds up with everything from flight, radio, television, then the microwaves, ultimately the computer. And so everything starts moving much more rapidly, and the change in technology progresses much quicker than the ethical discussions or considerations of the implications. And especially with the iPhone and the advancement of the computer, that's just gone on steroids. So the changes are coming so rapidly, you can't even absorb the change.
Tom Hutchison:That's what I think has really accelerated what we're seeing with these differences in students and ourselves as well.
Rob:So one of the things that I've been thinking through in the philosophical perspectives, what's the goal of education, especially for a Christian? And to me, it's to look like Christ. And so that made me start thinking about, well, how does the Bible define it? How does the Bible define maturity? Well, the image of Christ is what we're predestined to be, Romans eight twenty nine, for those of us who are following after him.
Rob:But when you work it out, when you get down to the brass tacks, if you will, there has to be some sort of growing up, some sort of maturity, a pattern of maturity that we should be following. That made me start thinking about, like, Philippians three, second Peter one to 11. And both of those kind of give this idea of pushing forward to this goal. Right? The goal to know Jesus, to know Christ, and the power of his resurrection, thinking things behind you that are bad or that that are lost and pushing forward to to Christ.
Rob:And Paul actually says, you know, any who are mature should think on those things. And so I've been trying to think about what you as mature brothers in Christ have been seeing, and how do we help those who seem like they're just being carried away by the tide. And I think in some to some degree, I don't know about you, but I feel that way too. I feel like I'm being swept by something, and I feel like I'm out of control with it. I don't know.
Rob:Maybe I'm the only one who feels that way. I don't know if Jared feels that way. You know?
Jared:I I don't know. I I I've been a bit disconnected from teaching students last time I which this sounds weird to say, but last time I actually had a class was, like, in person was before COVID. I've been teaching online ever since, it's harder to see that in an online environment. But so I don't know. I mean, I I even I feel like when I taught in 2019, I didn't see this much of a difference in maturity, like, you guys are talking about.
Jared:I'm always looking for answers. Okay. Why is this happening? And my initial thought is, well, COVID. That's that's what happened.
Jared:And as a result of COVID, everyone's in a bit of, I don't know, a sense of, like, still trying to figure out what's going on. Hutch and doctor Miller, you both taught during 09:11. So did you see because they always talk about generational shifts happening as a result of some sort of catastrophic event. Usually, that's how it's a good marker of a generational change. And maybe, Hutch, you can refute that or support it.
Jared:But did you guys notice a shift like this after nine eleven happened?
Chris Miller:Nine eleven was obviously a big event for the world, especially for America, but I don't think it had the personal impact that the sustained isolation from COVID had. Mhmm. And and, nine eleven disrupted the airways for about a week and made them more difficult after that. But what COVID did was force students into their homes apart from social relationships, and it completely disrupted the way we did education. Even when we came back, you know, eight months, nine months later, it was a very impersonal event.
Chris Miller:In fact, to this day when students say, oh, I had your class during COVID, and I say, oh, that's why I didn't recognize you without your mask on. Because it was like almost a blank forgotten semester or a couple of years anyway. I do think there are results that still we see from that. When students have said to me this year especially, I did really poorly on that exam. Could I could I take it over again?
Chris Miller:And that just kinda blows my mind because it would never let students take an exam over, but I think that may be one of those extra allowances from COVID that now they're expecting to be the rule.
Tom Hutchison:And I do think sometimes it's major, as you mentioned, like a political event or a war, international event or something like that, but it's not always. And so the conclusion of World War two made some major changes economically that really laid a foundation for a generation. And as those kids grew up, they took those values with them, and it really shaped the generation behind them with their kids. Some would debate whether it was actually nine eleven or whether it actually is the introduction of the iPhone just a few years later. And and you will find that, you know, from our generation, people tended to measure time by those major events.
Tom Hutchison:Anyone in our generation knows where they were when JFK was assassinated, and they know where they were when a man landed on the moon. The generation today knows when the Harry Potter movie came out and which iPhone they were carrying. And so there's been a shift from how you identify yourself with the culture around you from really those major milestone events for a country or world and those kind of things to now the really advancing technology and media and their association with that as the stories of the culture. Mhmm.
Rob:It seems like too we're facing a micro tribalism of sorts. What I noticed now and, again, I'm you guys have more experience with it than I do, but just from teaching. So I teach Monday and Wednesday business ethics. So juniors and seniors, mostly seniors. And I'm noticing a lot more contrast in the groups.
Rob:Everybody is looking for their place to belong, their touchstone, if you will, and I think that's what COVID did. I think COVID kind of erased, and some might argue, were they real boundaries at all, or were they just made up boundaries and people just kinda just went along with it? But now in the absence, if you will, the void that COVID was, they chose their their own group, whether that be a certain group that played a certain video game, or followed a certain person, influencer. We got so many influencers. Mhmm.
Rob:Right?
Chris Miller:Well, per perhaps. But I think I think that's another one of those results of, what the Internet has now allowed. That is May maybe another way to describe as the democratization of entertainment so that everyone now has the ability to create their own band in their in their in their garage and produce, some of the biggest stars today, Billie Eilish and others, produce the albums and not in a production studio, but in a bedroom with the sophisticated equipment so that so that influencers are doing this all in their backyards now and bands are doing this. And so there is no centralized location of entertainment that happens either on a tonight show or something as it did in the sixties or seventies. And there is not simply broadcast TV that's broadcast at one time.
Chris Miller:Now you can find anything you want streaming at any time you want. You can find any kind of music the same way, any kind of influencer. And that's where I think maybe COVID helped push us that way, as we all got cocooned and our connections with the world were all digital. So maybe just push us a little bit more in that direction so that, you know, twenty, thirty years ago, you could talk about who was the new Christian band or the new band, and now there are just, feels like, hundreds of aspiring artists who are coming up. And that's just one facet of what digital technology now allows.
Tom Hutchison:And I I don't yeah. I don't think it's so much caused by COVID as COVID as Doctor. Miller saying, it's just kind of put that on steroids. Some of the things that were already happening, that democratization you're speaking about. There was an increasing sense that my voice in speaking is what's most important.
Tom Hutchison:And again, talk about generational differences. Don't have so much growing up saying, I need to go find some people who can teach me and help me learn. It's much more, I know what I need to say, I need a voice and a place to say it. I mean, you see that as simple as I watch just in a parallel situation. I've watched worship services where the people leading worship say, We're going to do a new song, so we'd like you to sit and just listen so you hear it before we sing.
Tom Hutchison:And the participants can't. They start singing and they stand up two or three notes into the song, and they're singing along with it full voice when they've never heard the melody. Because we've been schooled in our society that my voice and what I'm saying is what's most important. And the ability to sit and listen saying, I need to hear something before I have something to offer, that's changed dramatically. And so students tend to say, Well, I put this down.
Tom Hutchison:Why'd you lower my grade? I completed the assignment. Because to them, their voice and their opinion and what they say is what's most important, that they express their opinion is really where they get the credit. And so in the same way, in past days, were times where someone would go to college to find themselves, to grow up, to learn to be who they are and establish the life they're going to depict. Whereas much more now, college is much more what I have to click off the list to be able to get the job I want down the road.
Tom Hutchison:And more and more students are trying to bypass college and hacking their degrees to try and be entrepreneurs in the fields of their hobbies. And they want to work because they don't want to go into debt like their kids. And so it's much more the professor becomes a person holding them back from getting the credits they need to graduate rather than, Oh, there was something I didn't know I need to learn.
Chris Miller:Yeah. And unless they're creative and they just bypass college altogether and strike it rich because they become an influencer, and now I make millions. And those success stories are everywhere so that people are often of the opinion, I have enough expertise. I just need to package it in a creative way to to hit it big. And I think that's completely contrary to the biblical principle and the typical human principle.
Chris Miller:You need to work hard, develop some expertise, some wisdom so that you can be trusted.
Tom Hutchison:And that it takes time.
Chris Miller:It takes time.
Tom Hutchison:Right. And that it's a person being developed, not just things have clicked off the list that I can put on the resume or post to everybody for my profile.
Chris Miller:Right. Which is detrimental when you're asking students to work really, really hard or to be self directed about their working. And that's one of the ways I've tried to approach my upper level students is stop thinking like a student taking a test and start thinking like a shepherd preparing to feed the flock for my Bible majors and people who are going into any kind of ministry. Like you have to begin to say to yourself, I don't wanna just pass a test here. I wanna I'm really thinking way beyond graduation to a career, and not just a career, but to a life's work so that I can be prepared to give to others what I have learned and earned myself.
Tom Hutchison:And that's where for me, you know, I draw parallels between what we would consider adulthood and maturity kind of in the world around us and spiritual maturity. You know, us, you can define adulthood biologically. They're old enough to reproduce. You can define it in terms of legal functions. They're old enough to drive or join the military or take out a loan or be tried as an adult, vote, those kinds of things.
Tom Hutchison:But ultimately, most would talk about roles in society that are for adults. Having a career and a job, taking care of yourself, taking care of a family, being involved in civic responsibility, and being self directed. You make decisions for yourself and you're responsible for those decisions. And that sense of stepping into adult roles and functioning as an independent adult is a mark of someone who's matured. And in Scripture, I see some parallels, to be honest, where you have I go to three other passages that reference maturity in addition to the ones you have.
Tom Hutchison:First Corinthians one and two talks about the wisdom among the mature, which is identified as being the person of Jesus Christ as really God's answer for salvation, for our greatest need of sin, contra the Greeks and the Jews and their approaches. So it's a focus on Christ. Ephesians four talks about maturity as being stable, not blown here and there by the winds easily and not being easily misled. And Hebrews five talks about maturity as those who have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil, and they have a pattern of choosing what's right. So for me, as I'm looking at the students, I'm saying I want them to have their commitment to Jesus Christ settled and they own it, And they're not easily misled by the latest teaching and the latest social media posts and the latest book and the latest craze, but they're focused on really the foundational truths of Scripture.
Tom Hutchison:And then with that, they've just built a pattern that in situations they can discern right from wrong, good from evil, and they're tending to choose what's right. And that pattern is there so that they've entered this stage of adulthood. It doesn't end. It's they're old enough to drive a car and to vote, and they're going to keep growing the rest of their lives. But so for me, as I'm looking at students, I'm asking, are they understanding this role they have in the family of God and in the world as a Christ follower?
Tom Hutchison:And in doing that, is their commitment to Christ clear in a way where they're not easily misled, but they're building patterns of making good decisions and taking responsibility for those.
Jared:Alright. So talk specifically about how, you guys are seeing this in the classroom and what you're doing to remedy that or come alongside students and help them with that.
Rob:Where are you? I mean, are you that's maybe one of the struggles is that you're finding it harder to find pathways in. Is that one of the issues?
Tom Hutchison:There's times when, you know, I have a majority of my students this semester online, and I've never seen I've I've met one or two of them face to face. And so you don't know their backgrounds. It's harder to know how to respond, how to read. Are they being lazy, or is there a major crisis going on in life? It was the student I had once many years ago in a graduate course online where for three weeks I kept saying, you gotta work on your grammar and how your ideas are good, you're not communicating them well, till I finally figured out on he was from The Caribbean.
Tom Hutchison:English was the second language. The more I read it, I said, oh, I'm hearing it in my mind, and I went back and figured it out. But I never saw him face to face. So it's difficult to know why these things are happening and then know how to respond, and discerning through that online is a challenge. It's still a challenge in the classroom.
Tom Hutchison:It's even more a challenge online.
Chris Miller:The comment I made before about trying to teach my students to not just make their faith their own, but make their career and their life ministry their own, is this, that too often they take a class like a student to pass a test and take a few notes. And I've heard so many times students say, yeah, had that class, but I really can't remember much from it. Because it didn't really take anything away from it. And so I said, let's just flip that paradigm upside down. And so let's in this Bible class for upper level students, are we let's just not have a test or exams.
Chris Miller:The entire focus of my teaching of your study is going to be you writing out the commentaries for these books we're studying of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, so that you process all that information, you make appropriate applications in the work, and you'll have something, a basis from which you teach and which you can give to other people when you graduate, and it will be the hardest thing you've ever done, and indeed it has been. They they cry and they fuss and they scream and they say that's the best that's the best thing we've ever done because now we carry this with us. But it's a whole different mindset of them saying, when I graduate from here, I wanna be prepared to step in day one and do something like this. We talk about making faith your own. That's when you stop doing it for your parents or your pastor, and you start following Christ on your own because it's important and it's internalized.
Chris Miller:That's what I'm trying get them to do with education. And and so far, it's it's a ton of work. But then again, that's exactly the biblical way. There's nothing in my life I've gained that I didn't have to work really hard for, and I think that's God's pattern from the book of Proverbs. Go to the ant, you sluggard.
Chris Miller:Observe his ways. He he does his work in the summertime without being made, without deadlines. It's internalized to do the hard work. Jesus says in John 17, I have glorified you, father, by finishing the work which you gave me to do. That's what we're called to do.
Chris Miller:We're we're made in the image of a creative worker. The first seven days of creation, God is working. So, yeah, it's it's that kind of not what do I have to do, but how good do I want to become? And is that an internalized motivation for doing your schoolwork?
Tom Hutchison:I've just been hit with this recently in grading and interacting with students. A couple different ways just stand out to me is, you know, I've always, as long as I've taught, had some students in my class who had a difficult time getting work done. They didn't finish reading, getting assignments done. But honestly, in the past, when I first started teaching for many years, they were the outlier. And it was the unusual student that usually had something special going on or other things you were dealing with.
Tom Hutchison:I'm finding an increasing number of students that just don't get the work done. And so they just don't turn in assignments. And so you try to figure out, well, what do I need to do to teach them? Life isn't like that when you go out and get a job that you can just not show up, that you can do things. When you have a responsibility at a church, can't just go, Oh, I don't feel up to it this week.
Tom Hutchison:I'm not coming. Because those people still need the ministry and they were planning on you. So trying to For me, I've tried to build a late work policy that is true to life and recognizes the challenge but gives consequences. So and I know some faculty and some do it different ways and different classes might be some, but I've seen somewhere, you know, if you're a minute late, it's a zero. Honestly, I don't think we live that way as faculty.
Tom Hutchison:So I have a hard time pushing that. So what I do is I reduce it. Like for me, I reduce it up to 15% if it's within a week late and up to 30% within two weeks late and then a zero afterwards. And so for two weeks they get a reminder going, I don't know what's going on. You're not getting it in.
Tom Hutchison:You need to get your work done. I hope you can get it organized. And I tell them, if it happens once or twice in a semester, it's not going to kill your overall grade. Make it a pattern. You'll fail the class.
Tom Hutchison:Yeah. But so what I'm trying to is help them recognize that life can be hard and there might be a week where it's off, but deal with it and build a pattern that says I'm going to accomplish work and get it done. And I want to try to somehow think through how do I build a system that teaches them responsibility while recognizing the challenge and recognizing that this generation I think tends to be much more fragile. They have a very difficult time keeping things in proportion. And so honestly, you know, again, I go back to days even when we were in college or those kinds of things, you you had a breakup.
Tom Hutchison:It was hard, but you couldn't just say, well, I'm not gonna go to class or I'm not gonna do my work. You had a crisis at home or a financial thing or you were sick a couple days. You just couldn't blow it off and say, oh, I can't handle it. And yet today, it seems like things it's difficult to keep things in proportion. And so what to us, you look at and you go, That just seems small.
Tom Hutchison:To them, it's just like life changing and they need days off from classes and expect you to give it to them. Yeah. Trying to somehow recognize, I know those emotions are real for you and that you're struggling with that, but this is the reality of what needs to be done. And it's a challenge to know when to press into that and when to give them breathing room. But trying to build a system to do that and pay attention to what those things are to try and address them in classes becomes important.
Jared:So wrapping up, in summary, I think I'm what I'm hearing from both of you is that it seems like you're saying that to help this current generation of college student, it sounds like you're both using assessments that work towards more a something that's going to help them with their career, or it's something that's more practical than maybe you have had to do with, previous generations of students? Am I am I getting there at least?
Tom Hutchison:To be honest, I've always been wired to practical assignments. Rob experienced that.
Rob:Yes. Has.
Tom Hutchison:It's just the way I'm wired, but I also now I'm finding that to be much, much more important, and I'm having to emphasize it and highlight it in a new way and really have them own what they believe and then defend it well and really submit it to Scripture. And so figuring out those kinds of things has been important.
Chris Miller:This goes back to one of the early points that Rob made when he was asking about maturity, and we've been answering basically from our classes and biblical classes. But the same thing is true in any nurse or any engineer, and you can tell it as a professor. Are they doing this just to pass the test or are they really digging in because they want to know because they see themselves three years from now in the field as a practitioner of it? And those are two very different approaches that are determined by the heart of maturity level of the student, whether they're thinking, Oh, graduation is the end of this life, or it's like, it hardly even counts. When I graduated from college, I didn't even want to go to graduation because my sights were set on what came beyond that.
Chris Miller:And that was just a small stepping stone to get to where I wanted to be. It wasn't the end of my life. And so the maturity is what are their targets? What are their goals? What are they looking for?
Chris Miller:Are they thinking about where I'm going to be five years from now?
Tom Hutchison:And as part of that, to me, it's much more important that they establish a process of self assessment for where am I and what do I know, and how am I gonna learn, and what have I learned, and develop a pattern for how they're approaching life and taking responsibility for that. That's gonna carry with them with the problems they face in ten years that we can't even envision right now. Well, I wanna
Rob:thank you both. This has been extremely beneficial for me personally, but I hope I hope for our listeners as well. Thank you.
Ryan:Thanks for listening to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. Remember to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Please also, if you have a comment or a question, feel free to reach out to us on LinkedIn. And don't forget to check out our blog, cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.