Welcome to Digication Scholars Conversations.
I'm your host, Jeff Yan.
In this episode, you will hear part one of my conversation with J.
T.
Torres, Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning
at Quinnipiac University.
More links and information about today's conversation can be found on Digication's
Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Full episodes of Digication Scholars Conversations can be found on
YouTube or your favorite podcast app.
Welcome to Digication Scholars Conversations.
I'm your host, Jeff Yan.
My guest today is JT Torres, Director of the Center for Teaching and
Learning at Quinnipiac University.
Welcome, JT.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you for having me on.
It's a pleasure to speak with you again.
Yes, um, uh, we've had the fortune of working with Quinnipiac University Um,
for a number of years and you've been an instrumental part of, um, um, using,
um, you know, ePortfolios at Quinnipiac.
Um, I'm sure we'll talk a lot more about that later when appropriate, but first
I really want to learn more about you.
Um, I did, uh, I, I know that you have, um, been, uh, instrumental
in many things, not, not just ePortfolio at the university.
You're the director for teaching and learning.
Why don't you tell us a little bit about, um, maybe Quinnipiac University and What
a Center for Teaching and Learning means for those who don't know what that is.
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
So, I've learned that centers for teaching and learning are very different based
on the institution where they're based.
Uh, so, Quinnipiac, um, prides itself on being a professional private institution.
That word professional carries a lot of weight.
It means that we are really dedicated to career readiness and we're also
dedicated to thinking about what it means to prepare students to not only join.
Uh, the economic force or the job market, um, but to also change it, right?
To have that agency to change it, um, hopefully with the social justice
element in terms of, you know, we're, we're changing our economy.
So it works for everybody, not just those with wealth, um, but also how do I make
sure that I can put food on the table?
So I can do that work of change, right?
So it's not, job placement...
It's also professionalization that requires a certain amount
of critical thinking skills, creative thinking skills, right?
Again, we're not just matching people to a workforce.
We also want them to take charge and lead that workforce based on
ethical decisions that they make.
That funnels down into our Center for Teaching and Learning in these
pretty ambitious ways and these pretty interesting ways, right?
So here at Quinnipiac, a lot of the work that we do is backward
design is reverse engineered from.
The current market, you know, what are those current jobs?
Um, what are the skills needed for those jobs?
For instance, um, we know through surveys like Glassdoor that curiosity and creative
thinking, a curious mindset and creative thinking are really, really important.
People are saying they want, right.
Our tomorrow's leaders need to be able to look at problems in new
ways, and they need to be curious.
They need to not just follow standard protocols, especially if we know
those protocols don't work for everybody, but how do we change those?
So when If we're reverse engineering and we're designing backwards from
that, the center here, it really works closely with courses to
help align classroom assignments.
Um, I'm really big on authentic assessment, where like, don't
just assess knowledge for the sake of assessing knowledge.
Assess knowledge in the same way that students will be assessed when they are
in their particular fields of study or their disciplines or their professions.
Right.
So how can projects become aligned with the real world?
Um, how can we break down that binary between the classroom is one world and
then the real world is another world.
How can the classroom become a real world?
So it's a lot of, um, a makerspace approach, right?
So the teach, the teaching and learning center here works with faculty chairs
and program program directors to reflect on what those goals are.
What are we doing?
What we're doing.
And then how do we start making those changes?
So it becomes less of a classroom space and more of a space that
transitions us into that real world.
So a lot of case studies, lots of problem solving, there's particular
pedagogical approaches that align with a university like Quinnipiac that calls
itself a professional institution.
Um, and so I, I have to adapt and make sure that, you know, my
training in educational psychology provides the relevant resources and
approaches for the context here.
That's lovely.
And I, I think that that's, I'm sure we'll, we'll, we'll have a chance
to talk about, you know, today's sort of people's percept, general
perception of higher education.
...oh yeah.
You know, um, And there are, I mean, statistically, we have seen a drop
in enrollment, especially in, um, in, uh, community colleges, um, and some
of the numbers are stark, you know, it does not, it's, it's not, it's
not just a slight decrease in some of it, maybe have kickstarts by COVID or
maybe enhanced by COVID that dropped.
Um, but it's, it's a little bit scary, the general perception that, that exists in,
in, in, you know, for higher education.
I, I sort of, I want to, I want to talk a little bit about, I, I, I, I, by the
way, been following a lot of your work throughout, you know, the years and
I've, I've read some articles, I've been to many of your presentations, so I'm a
little fanboy, fanboying um, you know, and, um, I, I remember that, um, you have,
um, done some work in doing inclusive, um, sort of designing, um, Um, designing
your classroom to be inclusive, designing assignments, designing your whole course,
the nature of the course to be inclusive.
Um, what does that mean?
And, you know, like you talked about this idea of balancing, Hey, you know,
there's workforce development and, you know, trying to make sure that
people can, can, can, can benefit financially and, you know, being
able to support themselves, but also there's this other part, which is.
Making society better, making changes, making it the way, you know, equipping
them with the ability to do all of that.
And I have this feeling that this inclusive classroom was something that
I've always been so interested in.
What does that mean?
And what can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you.
That's, that's one of my favorite topics.
And, um, right now we're doing our semester kickstart at Quinnipiac.
So, um, about three presentations this week on that topic.
Um, so I'll start at what everyone thinks is the starting point, um, of what does
it mean to have classrooms that are diverse, equitable and inclusive, right?
We get.
Stuck on that acronym of DEI because of how it's been taken up
in popular press, um, covered in popular media where we think that
means critical race theory, right?
We think that like every child from kindergarten to college is being taught
this legal theory of critical race theory, or we think it means that we need to
know the right terminology and we need to almost compete in the diversity Olympics
to show like how inclusive we are, that we have all the right language, right?
And I'm sharing this as a starting point because I think, you know,
We look at the climate that we're in and it's so politically charged.
You know, you're talking about, um, the drop off in college enrollment.
A lot of that is politically motivated.
Like you can look, um, I'm talking about, um, some data that's, that I
read from the book, "What We Value", published by Lynn Pasquerella,
president of AAC&U (American Association of Colleges and Universities.).
And historically, um, from around the sixties, we've seen this drop
off in trust, largely from people who register as Republican voters, right?
But that's not the case so much anymore.
Now we're starting to see trust in public colleges and universities.
Almost, it's not completely level, but almost level out where even
people who are registered as Democratic, who historically, again,
um, in recent history, have been supportive of higher education.
There are issues as well around trust and it's coming around DEI, right?
Like, are we as inclusive as we say we are?
Um, and so challenges are everywhere.
And I think a lot of it is focusing on competence.
Like, are we competent in DEI?
And then we have, you know, the workforce is also responding in
these really interesting ways.
Um, when it comes to, you know, ESG or DEI initiatives in certain
corporations, depending on where you are in the company or in the country.
So there's also a skillset that's expected by particular employers in
terms of being able to be inclusive.
And so it's a lot of noise and that's really what I'm just trying to say.
There's a lot of noise around it.
And for me, when I work with educators, I see.
Inclusivity as being a very human thing.
For me, it just comes down to can a student see themself in this class?
And there's so many ways that they can or cannot see themselves in that class.
If I'm, um, a student and I sit down in the class and I look day one, I'm
looking at the syllabus, I'm looking at the reading list and I notice No, no
scientists, um, are of a Latino heritage.
No scientists share my backstory.
I might be a little bit more disengaged, right?
Um, I might not be as invested or maybe I still am for other reasons, but now
those are largely external because I don't see myself in this space.
Um, and so for me, that's all we're talking about when we meet
in the inclusive classroom, are we giving opportunities for everybody
to see themselves in this room?
So I think about the word belonging.
I think that carries a lot of weight.
In terms of how we design an inclusive class, are we creating communities
where people feel connected?
Are we creating communities where my goals and my interests are aligned
with the outcomes of this course?
Um, but the content makes sense to me and has personal relevance, right?
Like I'm just talking about human connection.
I'm talking about empathy.
I'm talking about belonging.
I'm talking about being excited to come to class because I not only feel safe
there, but also encouraged to be my best self, regardless of my race, my
gender, my identity, my ability, right?
I have that encouragement, and I feel that I can do that here.
Man, I want to be your student.
It's the exactly the type of things that it feels so much more so just common
sense, you know, like, do you feel engaged as someone that you can see yourself?
You know, you have that very natural sort of, um, do you feel that warm and
fuzzy feeling about, hey, when I'm here, you know, do I, do I feel that way?
Exactly.
I feel like, oh man, I'm getting shunned.
Even if it's no one said anything to you in your face about it.
Exactly.
You know, I, and again, my background's in educational psychology.
So I see inclusive classrooms as not just being a trendy moment or not
just being warm and fuzzy, although I know what you mean and that's
really important, but there's also cognitive effects to it, right?
So if I'm in a class and Somehow, in some way, my defensiveness is triggered.
Maybe, again, like, maybe there was a microaggression, an unintentional
microaggression, or maybe the faculty member can't pronounce my name or
won't pronounce my name, and any kind of defensiveness that's triggered, I
have cortisol production, my amygdala is activated, and it's, I'm worried
more about self preservation than I am about what's being done in class.
Now, if I get those warm and fuzzy feelings as you talked about, right, I
get, If the instructor made an intentional choice to help me feel welcome, to
help me feel connected, to encourage me explicitly that I belong here and I can
do what this class is designed for me to do, that defensiveness comes down.
I feel more relaxed.
I am literally, I have opened up more cognitive resources to be available to
do the hard work of learning, right?
It's not just like a trendy movement.
It's not just social justice.
It's literally how our brains work.
And I think that's, I think I've heard you and others talk about this as being
sort of like growth mindset by design.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
If you can get into that mindset, how could you be receptive of the
kind of things that you're going to try to try to learn and try
to experience in the classroom?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Um, so I want to learn a little bit more about how JT Torres come to be.
Because you have these, I mean, look, you are, you obviously,
you have your PhD in education psychology and, you know, a lot of.
There's a lot of knowledge, you know, from sort of the institutions, but you
also are, if I believe I'm right, you are, you are, you are, um, uh, from Cuba
originally or your family's from Cuba?
Is that right?
My family, yeah.
I was born in Miami, Florida.
Yeah.
My family's from Cuba.
What?
Tell us a little bit about what you were like growing up and how will that
sort of shape you to, to be, you know, um, to, to, to who you are today.
Yeah, I think, um, I'm not sure how controversial you want this podcast to be.
Um, but so, um, yeah, so I, I've had a rocky road with education.
Um, you know, part of it is because of my, my family's background, but.
I actually don't know.
I don't, I'm not going to even attempt to try to psychoanalyze
myself, but I did have a rocky road with education where I largely did
not see myself in it as a child.
Um, I like, not only was I growing up in Miami, Florida, which is a highly, highly
diverse, uh, city, a city that grew in diversity before it was able to grow in
the infrastructure to support diversity.
Right.
Um, so not only did I grow up in that environment, but I also have ADHD.
So sitting down in classrooms for a very long time as a child
was very, very difficult for me.
Um, so there were lots of calls home to my, to my parents.
Um, you know, there, I had to go to speech therapy because not only did my
brain work in different ways than my mouth could, but I was also juggling,
right, the broken Spanish at home with the broken English I was trying
to learn and combining them together.
Yes, I went to speech therapy.
Um, I had all sorts of behavioral issues and episodes in high school
that led to problematic, um, outcomes.
Like, for example, I'll tell this one story.
I, I hit this band in high school where I was frequently skipping school.
Um, I, I didn't see myself there.
So if I didn't see myself there, then why would I want to go there?
I felt more connected with my friends when we would skip school and go
home and play video games, because playing video games, I felt capable.
I was in control of the world.
Even if it was a virtual world, I had the agency to do
whatever it is I wanted to do.
And so that's what I would do for a little bit until my mom.
Got a job in the attendance office at the, at the high school.
Wow.
She went, she, she really went for it.
Yeah.
I mean, do you know, do you know how much trouble you you're in when your mom has to
do a career change just to like, just to like, make sure you're, you're in school.
Um, and then, and even then, you know, like we would drive to school
and I, I went to this large urban high school in central Florida
that looked a lot like a prison.
I mean, there were, there were.
Barbed wire fences around it.
There was a police guard you had to go into.
It was not a welcoming environment.
And so my mom would drive me into school, park in the parking lot.
She would go into the attendance office to start her day.
And then I would just walk to my friend's car.
We would leave school and then come back at three o'clock so I can meet
her in front of the attendance office to get in the car and despite all
that scheming, you would get in the car and she would still ask me,
she was like, how was school today?
And, you know, I would, I would try to give her, you know, the normal.
You know, BS answers that we would always give, like, it was fine.
But then, like, after some follow up questions, she would just call me out and
say, You do realize I work in attendance.
I know you were not at school today.
What is wrong with you?
Um, you know, and I, I, I didn't have the language to explain to her,
like, why I felt that I had more agency at my friend's house playing
video games than being at school.
Um, And, and so like these, these challenges happen.
I went to a community college.
Um, I, first semester, I did pretty well, but then I, I
stopped, um, attending college.
I, I, I started working at a restaurant on Disney property.
Um, this is in Orlando, Florida, and started making some good cash
working at a, at this restaurant, and in my very short sighted life
at that moment, I, I could just do cash and then not do college.
And so I did that for a while until I had this random professor.
I say it's random because it was in an elective that I
never really saw myself in.
It was a computer science class and I never really had
aspirations to do computer science.
I was in the class cause I loved video games and someone told me that
I should learn a computer science.
And so.
I was in this class not doing well in community college and the faculty
member emailed me and said, um, asked me why I don't come to class.
And so I wrote, I was honest and I wrote back and told him what I do and told him
about the video game obsession that I had.
And then he said, can you come to class next week and then stay after class?
I promise you're not in trouble.
I just want to introduce you to som...
to somebody.
Um, so I did, and he introduced me to a group of students who were designing their
own games, programming their own games.
He's like, they're forming a club.
Why don't you just hang out with them?
And that changed everything.
Like, once I realized that my interest could connect with what I was learning,
even though I didn't become a computer scientist, I never took another computer
science class again, but that faculty member, through that connection, um,
helped me get into creative writing.
And that's what I majored in as an undergrad, creative writing.
And then I became fascinated with the story that I'm telling, um, in
the video games that we were, you know, with my group of friends.
We're writing video games, we're designing them.
A lot of them, like 90 percent of them, never came to fruition, but just
the thinking through what this game would be and what these stories are.
I became very fascinated with, um, the cognitive effects of storytelling, um,
how that shapes our identities, how I'm a totally different person in two years
because of my new love of storytelling.
Um, and then that took me from the MFA inquiry to writing to Ed Sykes.
It was just, it was a blur.
It was like a montage.
Like imagine you're watching a movie, just a montage of clips to some pop music
from that moment of constantly getting in trouble, constantly trying my best
to get out of the education system, to staying in it for the rest of my life
because I realized that's where I belong.
Because of this one random encounter where someone said, that thing you're
interested in, it matters here.
That's, that's just amazing.
That's awesome.
What was.
What was the, your favorite video game or games when you were to, you know, doing,
playing that with your friends house?
Oh, easy, easy.
Oh, yeah.
Legend of Zelda, for sure.
Legend of Zelda.
And the, and the reason, right, um, there's so, if you have any
experience with Legend of Zelda, it's a lot of implied storytelling.
There's no voice acting in the game.
It's a lot of reading.
Um, there are kind of episodic events through this epic narrative.
That you piece together in your own mind, um, I think this is true.
I think the main character of Zelda, like Zelda's the princess that you ultimately
save, the game's named after her, but the character you control is named Link.
The reason, I think, the reason his name is Link is because that protagonist was
ultimately designed for the player to project themself into that protagonist.
So no matter, you know, Link is kind of androgynous, um, he's kind of, you know,
Ambivalent and who this character is, and that's by design because the whole
idea I think from Nintendo was that you would see yourself in this character
and that's, that fascination for me, um, just completely captured all my interest.
And, and I could imagine that many of you are, I mean, I'm not, I don't know
what the, what the competition is.
So, so, so if you weren't doing that, which you just described
with so much passion, right?
I think anyone can.
Here, and if you are watching the video, you can like literally see him light
up, like talking about Legend of Zelda.
Um, but, so what's the competition on the other end?
In the classroom, what would you be doing instead?
Instead of playing Legend of Zelda?
Yeah.
Yeah, um, yeah, this might be the good transition into ePortfolios, but like,
doing meaningless, uh, Assessments, right?
Like doing meaningless work, like work that I don't see the
relevance in my, in my life, right?
Um, at that time, at that time, right?
And, um, I learned how to make those connections later.
And then I also was fortunate enough to have faculty members who explicitly
made those connections for me.
Like this, um, computer science professor I had years ago.
But yeah, the alternative to a video game, to someone like Link,
who lets me project myself into the environment is, do busy work.
Um, you know, how often have we been told in school, you need to know this
in case you need to know it, right?
Like it's no math.
Um, you don't need to like algebra, for instance, it's like, just in
case you might need to know algebra.
Like I've never used algebra.
Like maybe I have, I don't know.
Like I didn't retain enough.
My background's in English language arts, so sorry for the, the math
shade that I just threw there.
But, um, right.
It's, it's, if we don't.
Use it if you don't see that relevance, right?
Then we don't practice it.
We don't incorporate it into our memory.
And yes, so much of education has always been just in case.
So this approach, like video games, have directly impacted how I approach education
and how I approach the Center for Teaching and Learning, where I want everything to
be just in time, not just in case, right?
I want people to be so immersed in the moment that when they run up against
the challenge and they don't know how to respond to that challenge, The
faculty member swoops in with, here's what you need to know right now.
And then I can incorporate that.
Here's what I need to know to overcome this challenge
that develops in the schema.
Right.
That develops in the long term memory.
That's what we call active learning.
And that's also what we call agency.
You are awesome.
Oh, you're awesome.
Thank you.
Well, I'm awesome.
Just listening.
I feel it.
I love that.
Um, you, you are talking about, you know, engaging students and doing things
that, that mean something for them.
You know, things that are like, you know, their projects.
There are, there are things that are not, you know, I actually, I don't know
whether you hear this a lot, but I see this a lot, which is people talk about
project-based learning, but there are really sort of a couple of different
levels of project-based learning.
I think there's like the project-based learning where someone designed the
whole project to just every step that you are supposed to go through.
To me, that's not really a project.
It's kind of better than like the truly non project-based learning, but
it's not really like a real project.
It's not a project that you, you get to be part of.
You're just like, you know, almost like following Legos.
Like, step one, step two, step three.
Look, it's not bad.
But, it's like way better than that in my mind.
Absolutely.
And, and so, can you talk a little bit about project-based learning
or these kind of more, You know, active learning is a more, more,
much more engaged kind of learning, the just in time kind of learning
that, that, that you were talking.
Can you give us some examples?
And I think you had, we were talking, you were about to talk
about potentially ePortfolio.
Please feel free to throw that in there.
Um, how, what's an example of that?
What does it look like in the real classroom for someone who,
you know, so far has said, all right, this is abstract idea.
Yeah, of course.
You're telling me.
You know, dessert tastes good.
I get it, but give me a real dessert.
Describe it.
Yeah, absolutely.
Um, I think a lot of it comes down to the gradual release of responsibility.
I know that's a contested term in educational spaces, but I think it's
helpful, um, as a heuristic to think about how much as faculty are we willing to
gradually release of our responsibility over the learning environment,
over the students, over the course.
Um, we want that to be gradual and want that to be part of a process.
If I do the single assignment prompt as you just described it, where I lay out
every single step and students get that up front, they're just following a script.
I have not released any kind of responsibility.
I've kept it all, I've marked it all down.
Um, students don't get much of a choice in the matter.
That word choice is the, is the secret sauce.
That's key, right?
We want multiple opportunities in project-based learning, um, active
learning, flipped classrooms, no matter what the model is, no matter what the
fad is, um, I think of these, these pedagogical terms like diets, right?
Like a new diet comes out and then people follow it for a little bit.
They fall off the diet, the same diet comes out, but it's repackaged under a
different name and then everybody jumps on it again, but it's still the same thing.
Um, and that's essentially what we're talking about with active learning.
It's.
How many opportunities do students have to make decisions
based on what they're learning?
They don't get a lot of opportunities to make decisions, right?
Like we tell them how they're going to be assessed.
We tell them what assignments to complete.
We tell them what to know.
And part of that is justified because yes, we are the content experts.
We know what they should know.
And you, it kind of defies the definition of being a student.
If you already know what you need to know.
That's why it's a gradual release of responsibility and it's more Um, it's
more collaborative than it is linear.
Now, what this looks like, I think AI has actually really helped us
clarify what this looks like for, because of chat GPT, for example,
um, the single assignment prompt.
It's dead.
It has to be dead by now, right?
If you're a student in my class and I give you that single assignment prompt
that tells you everything you should do step by step, all you have to do
is copy and paste that in the chat GPT and you'll get your final product.
But if I take that single assignment prompt and I break it up, and I say,
instead of having one prompt or one description, we're going to go through
this in phases and steps, like step one.
Decide a topic for your project.
That's a lot of cognitive work.
We overlooked that.
We think because, you know, we've pursued our interests as faculty, as scholars.
We've pursued our interests for so long that interest is second nature to us.
We don't remember what it's like for me and, you know, being that video game
player who was skipping school to not realize that my interests mattered here.
That takes a lot of cognitive and socio-emotional work to know, you know,
what counts and what's included and do I feel safe enough to include that.
So, choosing a topic and having people, having students have time to decide
what they would like to explore.
That takes feedback, that takes community, that takes process.
Once they have that topic, maybe asking them for a justification.
Why that topic?
What about your lived experience has led you to this topic?
The same way you asked me, um, how did J.
T.
Torres came to be?
I literally asked my students that.
Almost the second week of the semester when they're deciding their topics.
How did you arrive here in this room?
Why did you select this topic and what are you hoping to do with it?
Lots of thinking with that.
They don't know what's coming next.
They don't know that this topic is going to actually outline their semester
project is going to become their capstone.
It's going to become their career.
They don't have to think about that.
It's right here, right now in this moment, what matters.
And then breaking that down.
Okay, well now you have a topic.
Now you've told your life story.
Next thing we need to know as scholars is what's been written about it, right?
Like what, What is the literature out there?
What's the landscape?
What are the theories?
What's the evidence?
And then doing some kind of literature review and gathering, um, information and
sources with or without AI and chat GPT.
This is where ePortfolio comes in really, really handy because
it makes learning visible.
It makes that process visible as a digital story that we can visually see.
And maybe with hyperlinks and videos and all these modalities to just
deepen our engagement with the topic.
And, and then from that literature review, right?
Like, all right, now we have all these sources.
What did you notice as the missing elements, right?
Like, this is what we claim that to know about this topic.
Like, let's say someone chooses climate justice.
Um, and we know that, um, there are much higher rates of pollution or
ecological disaster around communities of color or communities who are
living in low, um, income, um, areas.
And so if we know that to be true, then what's the missing element?
What can we do?
To advance this conversation to provide some kind of social change
based on this knowledge, right?
And so we're just taking it step by step.
I've thrown away the single assignment description.
I don't use it at all anymore.
And I was, I was not using it before AI, but definitely not now.
Um, because.
I want students to stay on their toes.
I don't want them to know exactly what's coming next.
I like that element of surprise and dramatic tension since I pull from
my experience as a creative writer.
But also, if they don't know what's coming next, they can't game the system.
And if, and that fact that that suspense is there and that tense,
That, that tension is there.
That also means engagement and interest and curiosity are there.
I love that.
It is basically thinking of classes like playing a video game.
It's just Yep, exactly.
Awesome.
That's, so like now it's pretty transparent.
Like, why I do what I do.
It's all because of Legend of Zelda.
Well, it all goes down to the There is something that I, I want to
circle back to that I, I just love.
Um, you know, you had From the very get go, you talked about Quinnipiac
being a professional school that cares about students that can come out to
change society, to make changes to the world, right, in meaningful ways.
Um, I think that this is a big part of something that I, I see in, in
all different kind of contexts.
Um, when I, you know, a lot of people talk about critical thinking skills, you know.
Oftentimes critical thinking skills, people are referring to almost as
a, as a problem solving skills.
It's like, yeah, the questions, how do you get to the answer?
And I think that there's that critical making skills that Questions forming
skills that actually, I think some people can easily, easily argue that's
actually part of critical thinking as well, but that's not how it usually
translates into the classroom.
Oftentimes, you know, it's like, here's all the questions you get to answer,
but what I really love about what you're doing is, no, no, no, no, hold on.
You are coming with the questions and you're answering them because if they
don't get a chance to ask questions, how, how are they going to be able to.
Feel the agency and the responsibility and the rights to go on and make
changes to the, in the world.
Exactly.
Cause if they, they're always like, no, no, no.
The question to be asked, you just have to answer it.
Well, hold on a minute.
Who gets to ask the questions?
Exactly.
Right.
Do you just like, does questions just always exist?
There's just like facts, you know, somewhere in the air, we can just
go in and answer it, it doesn't, it doesn't work like that, right?
Someone's actually coming up with the questions.
It's in the view.
If everyone's just answering, you know, um, answering them, it's just half of
the, it's just half the experience.
To me, that's just not good, you know?
Exactly, exactly.
And you're also defining critical thinking really well.
Um, and I say that because I, I know that the definition for critical
thinking is very subjective.
Um, APA has one definition.
Um, if you look at critical pedagogy and critical scholars,
they have a different definition.
Definition that focuses more on critiquing systems of power, right?
So it's, it's all over the place.
Um, but I think one of that universal elements is that ability to ask questions.
Um, and that is, and I think that is something that we take for granted.
I teach a lot of first year courses, first year writing.
Um, I really, really love the first year experience of higher
education because it's this massive transition for human beings.
Um, not just for students, just for humans to take, to embark on this new journey.
Regardless of whether they're traditional students and they're, um, exploring
independence for the first time, or if they're students who are making
career changes, students returning from, um, returning from military
service, or students transitioning.
Um, from prison back into the community, um, these populations are
going through massive transformation.
So I love this identity because how can you not be full of questions in
this massive transformative moment?
But teaching first year courses, one thing that I have found is When I, when
I first started teaching, I would come in right away, day one, and the introduction
to the course, our icebreaker was, what question do you have about the world?
What questions do you have about the world?
At first, it was just silence, right?
Like, it was almost like people were waiting for me to tell them what questions
they should have about the world and how I've had to learn to scaffold that
Even that process in terms of first, you start with some kind of narrative.
Like, who are you and why are you here?
All right.
Based on that, what questions do you have about the world?
Or what was your past experience right before this one?
Um, where were you working?
Where were you living?
Who were you living with?
What questions do you have based on that?
But it had to provide some kind of context or starting point
because we don't offer a lot of opportunities to ask those questions.
And that is a fundamental element of critical thinking.
And there's also a politics to it, right?
So I've, um.
I showed this example, um, when I, when I taught, um, Environmental Literacy, um,
in, at Quinnipiac in our Interdisciplinary Studies program, um, The politics
of, as you said, who gets to ask a question is latent with power, right?
Who has the power to ask a question is very different, right?
Like that's, that's not the same for everyone.
And we could see those politics play out in terms of certain dominant systems.
Preferring one question over another.
So the example that I share with my class is the green revolution.
Um, in the sixties, where we, where we figured out, um, how to mass produce
food, because the question we were asking was, how do we feed the world?
Now, if you look behind the scenes, who was asking that question, a lot
of it was the large agricultural industry who wanted to increase profits.
And so feeding the world more cheaply.
Incentive, but the rest of us heard that question of social justice.
We were like, yeah, we should feed the world.
But what we know about the introduction of synthetic fertilizers and all
these harmful farming techniques is we actually created a more dangerous.
Ecological Environment, and I use the word ecological to say like not just
for the soil, but also for the kinds of foods we were creating, which were
much more process based, much more sugar based, much more carb based, and
we actually introduced new problems that weren't there because we were
asking a very profit seeking question rather than a truly equitable question.
Here's a preview of what's coming up next in part two of my conversation with J.
T.
Torres, Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning
at Quinnipiac University.
You know, first thing, plagiarism is older than AI, right?
Like, we know that that this has been a concern for many years, um,
for everybody, and this goes back to our, our relationship with assessment
that's more about accountability than it is about improvement, right?
And, and it's not.
We haven't been so concerned with, let me assess where you are, low stakes, so
I can see where you are, so I can help you improve wherever you are, right?
It's always been, let me assess where you are because this assessment is going
to have implications for your financial aid, for your scholarship, for your
career, for your ability to say it.
Like we just create all these pressures that we inadvertently
message to students, you better pass regardless of how you pass, right?