Transcriber: bernard Etienne Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
This is my cousin Ellie. She's eight.
One morning in late 2016,
her mom walked into her kitchen to find a scene in front of the stove.
In front of the stove was a stool;
on top of the stool was Ellie;
on top of the stove was a double boiler;
and inside the double boiler was chocolate.
Ellie was coating almonds in chocolate.
Her mom looked at the scene for a minute, and finally in confusion she asked:
"How do you even know what a double boiler is?"
to which her eight-year-old daughter replied:
"It's easy, I learned it from Martha Stewart on YouTube."
(Laughter)
The day that cousin Ellie started using YouTube
to learn the culinary arts from some of the greatest chefs around the world
was the day I realized that cousin Ellie and our university catalog
are not living in the same century.
What is a university catalog?
If Windows or iOS is the operating system of your laptop or your phone,
if the Constitution is the operating system of the United States,
then the catalog is the operating system of the university.
To see how our university operating system can engage and empower students,
let's take a look at four alternative schools:
Montessori Schools, Olin College, Medici University and Runaway University.
This is Maria Montessori on the 1000 lira bill.
She developed a system of education that focused on individual students.
Instead of emphasizing listening to lectures,
she emphasized active engagement by students.
Of the Google co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Marissa Mayer said:
"You cannot understand Google
unless you understand that Larry and Sergey were both Montessori kids."
The guy in the middle is Richard Miller.
He's the president of Olin College.
Olin College has some unusual ideas about education:
no tuition, no tenure, no departments,
and everything, including the curriculum, has an expiration date.
One of the reasons that Richard Miller is proud of Olin College
is that it is the only engineering school to rank in the top 20
on both of two different questions.
Number one, Olin students say they have never worked harder in their lives.
But, Olin students also say that they have never had more fun in their lives.
Medici University.
I have been teaching here at Long Beach State University
for 12 years now,
and along the way I have developed a couple of alternative institutions:
Medici University for avatars and Runaway University for international students.
Medici University has been operating for about eight years now,
over a 1000 avatars have participated, hailing from six different continents.
And just a week ago we broke ground
on the new MU college of avatar architecture and virtual urban planning.
This is an aerial view of the Medici University campus.
The campus sits on 6.5 hectares of virtual land,
almost all of which is dedicated to individual students' studios,
where students pursue projects of their own design.
Here's a map of the 93 student studios on the campus.
Faculty office hours.
(Laughter)
Art critique.
Here, a group of students is gathering to watch the livestream
of the HASTAC Education Conference.
These students are gathered at one of the university coffee shops
to discuss the upcoming issue of the university magazine,
MU Creativity.
At the top center of the frame is a tiny blue seahorse avatar.
That avatar belongs to the Los Angeles artist Micol Hebron
who's giving a visiting artist talk about her work.
Runaway University.
About two years, about 200 international students from 61 different countries
have participated at Runaway University Los Angeles or RULA,
also known as my house.
(Laughter)
Here, Maggie and Yen Li are putting a pin in country number six, Malaysia.
Here are students from France, Germany, China and the United States
in the RULA map room.
This is Iotchek from Poland leading a laughter workshop
with students from Korea, Argentina, Columbia and South Africa.
This is Mehdi from Algeria giving a talk on World Geographies and Cultures Day.
That day we had talks by students from Algeria,
Honduras, Malaysia, Pakistan and Turkmenistan.
I want to share with you something that I have never done
at Medici University,
something that I have never done at Runaway University,
but something that I do every single day here at Long Beach State University:
take attendance.
If you have to take attendance, you have already failed.
We live in a world of detached motivators.
We live in a world where extrinsic motivation like points and grades
has replaced intrinsic motivation like developing a career
or becoming a more complete human being.
We attend class because attendance is taken.
We perform for points and grades as if they were ends in themselves,
when in fact they are meaningless.
In the bankrupt pursuit of points and grades,
we have created a college experience
where too many are not really working all that hard,
where too many are not really having that much fun.
I dream of an active, engaged, project-based, student-defined
college experience,
where students truly are working harder than they've ever worked in their lives,
where students truly are having more fun than they've ever had in their lives.
And in that university, no one will ever have to take attendance.
I should also note that at that university,
there will be very little of what I am doing right now:
lecturing.
Much less sage on the stage and much more guide on the side.
I'd like to share a few solutions, a few thoughts with you.
First, a couple ideas about K-12
and then let us talk about college.
Cousin Ellie is currently being home-schooled.
Her older brother of two years, cousin Eli,
came home from kindergarten one day
and informed the family that the kindergarten curriculum
was not sufficiently meeting his academic interests -
(Laughter)
and he asked if he could be home-schooled.
It's a lot of work,
but it is one way to bend curriculum toward student interests:
for cousin Ellie, the culinary arts; for cousin Eli, science.
The tall guy in the middle is Ian Rothman,
he's the grandson of one of my mom's oldest and closest friends.
He's a recent UC Riverside graduate,
and today he teaches middle school in Los Angeles.
In Mr. Rothman's classroom, the work is all project-based.
In Mr. Rothman's classroom, the students write their own goals.
I hope our schools districts will support young teachers like Mr. Rothman,
and if they do,
then when his seventh graders get to Long Beach State in 2022,
or when cousin Ellie gets here in 2027,
they will be prepared to take a big role in developing their own curriculum,
and in fact, they will demand it.
All of which is great if you can wait a generation or two,
but what if you're in college right now?
More than half of you here at TEDxCSULB today are current college students.
How can you have a more engaged and empowered college experience?
Hamilton!
What does a smash Broadway musical have to do with our university catalog?
It turns out, a lot.
The first great political battle in American history
was between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson was a strict constructionist,
who believed the government could only do
precisely what was outlined in the Constitution.
Hamilton was a broad constructionist,
who believed that the Constitution was a living, flexible document
that could and should respond to the culture of its time.
It turns out that interpreting our Long Beach State University catalog
is a little bit like interpreting the Constitution of the United States.
And like Alexander Hamilton, some of your departmental advisors
might be broad constructionists.
The most important advice I can give you is to make your education project based.
In the book Money Ball, we're presented with the idea
that the Oakland A's should not be buying players,
they should be buying wins.
By assembling a team of undervalued players,
the Oakland A's are able to outperform the New York Yankees
with only one third of the Yankees' budget.
So let's substitute classes for players,
and projects for wins.
Your college education should not be about buying classes,
it should be about creating projects.
If the poor Oakland A's can outperform the rich New York Yankees,
then I believe that you can outperform the university catalog.
(Applause)
Let's take statistics class in psychology as an example.
I've had a number of students tell me how much they hate their stat class.
I think the faculty kind of say:
"Trust us, you'll need this some day."
But what some of the students hear is:
"This is hard, boring and you'll never use it."
So what if we turn that upside down?
What if we made that project-based?
You're interested in psychology? Awesome!
What's a question you care about?
Why don't you go survey a few thousand of your peers here on the campus?
OK, now you have nine binders full of data.
What are you going to do with that?
How do you learn what your data has to tell you?
Well, you're probably going to need to learn some statistics.
But now, you're going to learn stat not because
"Trust us, you'll need it some day,"
now you're going to learn stat
because I need it for a question I care about right now.
At this point you might take a class, read a book,
hang out in faculty office hours or watch some videos.
How you learn stat is not as important
as the fact that you learn the tools you need
to answer the questions you care about today.
I have three tools for you
that can completely transform your college experience.
Number one: modify the class.
Number two: make your own class.
Number three: modify the curriculum.
Number one: modify the class.
I could not find a photo of my high school geometry teacher, Mr. Potter,
so this is Mr. Torsten, somebody else's high school geometry teacher.
(Laughter)
But Mr. Potter was my high school geometry teacher.
And at our final, he gave us a sheet with 27 questions,
and he instructed us to only answer the first 25.
He explained that Mr. Berren, the other geometry teacher,
had insisted on adding 26 and 27,
but that they were really over our heads, and don't even worry about them,
he would just grade the first 25.
So being young and a little cockier than I remember,
I asked if I could skip the first 25 questions
and only do 26 and 27.
Mr. Potter said, "OK."
I aced that class.
(Laughter)
Now, not every faculty member is going to allow you to rewrite their syllabus.
But some might.
See if you can trade a project you care about for a rote exam.
Practice negotiating with project leaders,
in this case, project leader equals faculty member.
Number two: create your own class.
This is the MP3 experiment, a project by one of my students, Heidi Schuster.
By creating this independent product,
Heidi was able to get the experience producing audio media.
She had the opportunity to create choreography
on the scale of a university campus,
and she was able to work with interactive social techniques
that she was interested in exploring.
You too can create your own projects.
Every department has either independent study or directed studies,
usually numbered 490-something in our catalog.
It's a chance for you to work with a faculty member
that you've developed a relationship with.
A chance for you to ask your own questions.
A chance for you to find your own answers.
Most often, independent study is one student, one faculty member,
but it doesn't have to be.
Find a partner to go on this project journey with you,
or a team.
I said that the most important advice I could give you
is to make your education project based.
That's true.
The second most important advice I can give you
is to visit your advisor early and often.
Your advisor is not just someone to read the catalog for you,
your advisor is your ombudsperson between you and the catalog.
They can be incredibly helpful,
and they are incredibly powerful.
I hope you'll take a lot of those independent study classes I mentioned,
but they're often limited to just six units.
Not very many units if you want to do multiple projects,
or with multiple faculty members in your department,
or a faculty members in another department you developed a relationship with.
Summon your inner Alexander Hamilton
and negotiate the interpretation of the university catalog
with your advisor.
Take more independent study.
Focus on classes in your department or other relevant departments
that emphasize project-based work.
Work with your advisor to develop your program to serve your career
here in your century.
So here we are, starting tomorrow morning,
cousin Ellie and I are challenging you
to make your education yours.
Work with faculty to bend classes toward projects you care about.
Work with faculty to create your own class.
Work with your advisor to emphasize project-based classes.
Now, I realize that the prospect of going up to faculty members
or your advisor and informing them that you think you have a better idea,
this might be a little intimidating for a few of you,
so if you need a little bit of extra time to work up the courage
to summon that inner Alexander Hamilton,
I have a completely painless way you can get started.
Develop your personal brand.
Visit any of 20 different platforms where you can create your own website
and start your e-portfolio.
Your e-portfolio is a place to showcase your projects,
to show completed projects,
a place to chronicle the process of ongoing projects,
a place to think about projects you might like to undertake in the future.
Share with the world the power of your successes
and insights from your failures.
And when you put your first project up on your new website,
send me your URL.
I would love to see what you've achieved
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)