Abstract
AT THE FIRST residence hall council meeting of the year, the hall staff advisor addressed the newly elected officers: “My door is always open to you. Don't be afraid to come and knock. I care about your success.” Her words sounded comforting, but to Anderson, they were also a cause for some concern. As a newly elected officer, he was reassured to know that the advisor would make time for him, but with his lack of experience, he did not even know where to start taking her up on her offer of support. What questions should he ask? What concerns should prompt him to ask for help? Even after the meeting, he remained confused. Anderson's situation is not too different from the character Neo's in the film The Matrix, when his teacher, Morpheus, asks him to leap from the roof of a skyscraper across a busy city street to the roof of the next building. When Neo asks Morpheus how to accomplish this task, Morpheus's cryptic reply is “Free your mind.”
Anderson's and Neo's predicament is typical on college campuses. In their article “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education,” Arthur Chickering and Zelda Gamson suggest that the educator's role is to offer support to students while creating opportunities for them to critically examine and take responsibility for their own experiences. In this article, we explore methods for balancing such support and challenge, using the characters of The Matrix as a guide.
The Matrix, produced by Joel Silver and released by Warner Brothers in 1999, tells the story of Neo, a young computer hacker who discovers that the world is not as it seems. Throughout the film, Neo learns about the world around him—the Matrix— from his teacher and mentor Morpheus, and from the truth teller and guide the Oracle, while being pursued by Agent Smith, who is determined to keep people from learning of the Matrix.
We have observed that faculty and student affairs educators often become frustrated with students whom they perceive to be receiving all the help and support they need to learn and grow yet continuing to treat classes as forums for the memorization of facts and cocurricular involvement as lines on a résumé. These educators may have something to learn from Neo's guide, Morpheus, who suggests that he can show his student the door but that Neo must walk through it himself.
The Gap between Teaching and Learning
ONE OF THE MOST COMMON, too often unacknowledged problems in education is the gap between teaching and learning. Questions that address this gap include these: How far should an educator go in motivating and helping a student learn new ways of thinking and acting? What is the optimal level of balance between challenge and support that should be provided to a learner during the educational process? What are appropriate expectations of learners in teaching environments?
Marcia Baxter Magolda uses an apt metaphor to depict the educational process in her book Making Their Own Way, one that links teaching with learning. She describes learning as a journey for the student, accompanied by the teacher. In The Matrix, Morpheus is a good companion for his student: he creates Neo's training program and places him in a challenging environment, chooses environments in which Neo should become competent, decides what is important for Neo to learn, and gives regular feedback on Neo's perfor-mance. As learners grow and see for themselves how to navigate their environment, they can take a more active role in shaping their own experiences and begin making decisions about the speed and direction of their training. During the first residence hall council meeting, Anderson needed his advisor to help define the stu-dent-advisor relationship, as well as help him start the process of leading in the organization. While the goal of any educator should be to help learners eventually journey on their own, we believe that the learning process should typically begin with the educator highly engaged in the process.
Helping students learn to direct their own educational journey is not always the practice in higher education. Educators sometimes focus exclusively on their own practices or on what they believe should be happening in a learning environment without fully considering student needs or accepting that students can think and act maturely. Examples abound of educators who teach primarily from the same lecture notes every year and student organization advisors who profess that they have an “open door policy” without describing to students what that really means. Both scenarios encourage students to disengage. Students need the right conditions in order to learn to walk through the equivalent of Neo's door, and the educator's tasks are to help them learn to lead themselves and to acknowledge their ability to do so.
The Balance between Challenge and Support
PROVIDING students with the optimal mix of challenge and support requires educators to balance shifting priorities. The importance of this balance is probably best illustrated by counterexamples. The educator who anticipates and works to solve all of a student's problems, leaving the student in the role of spectator, acts like Agent Smith in The Matrix, who works to eliminate problems before they are noticed. If residents of the Matrix did note these problems, they might begin to question the overall structure in which they live. Agent Smith's goal in the film is to maintain a sense of order, and he views any sense of independent action among those in the Matrix as a threat to that order. In cocurricular settings, this perspective is represented by the advisor who makes all of the phone calls to reserve space for events or brings a time line of tasks to the organization meeting so that students know what has to be completed. These advisors seem to have all the answers during meetings. Their organizations usually have successful, well-attended events but leave students like Anderson unaware that they too can lead the process.
In the classroom, “Agent Smith” faculty who readily provide “correct” answers to complex questions similarly disempower students. These faculty members imply that there is one way to interpret literature, one way to view history, or one way to dissect a frog. Instead of practicing how to articulate their own ideas about these issues, students instead become trained in reproducing existing knowledge. Much like the students in an organization whose advisor has all the answers, these students are often oblivious to their role as active learners.
At the other end of the spectrum lies another kind of educator: one who provides almost no guidance in the planning of activities in an attempt to provide maximum space for students to make mistakes from which they can learn. This role in The Matrix is played by the Oracle, who gives Neo virtually no information and tells people only what she decides they need to hear. When Neo visits the Oracle, she tells him that he is not the one who will save the world; in fact, she implies that he is not yet ready. The Oracle offers no further guidance to Neo, leaving him confused and unsettled, believing that he has no reason to achieve success. In educational set- tings, a lack of guidance can have a similar effect on stu- dents. They may often blame the professor for “not teaching” and, without the tools to learn independently, become confused about what role they should play in their own learning and development.
An “Oracle” advisor, for instance, might approve an event that she knows has been poorly received in the past but offer no insight to encourage students to think about the decision they are making. Students’ confidence in their skills will either be affirmed when the event is well attended—even if students have poorly organized the event—or crushed when no one participates. In the classroom, an Oracle faculty member does not provide a framework for student learning. Oracle instructors believe that transformative learning rests exclusively on a student's own discovery of knowledge. We see this to some extent in the faculty member who simply replies “I will leave that up to you” when a stu-dent seeks guidance about a project topic or in the instructor who avoids challenging students who express uninformed or ignorant views. While often well meaning, such laissez-faire educators, like the person who advised Anderson's hall council, leave the education of students to chance.
Whereas Agent Smith educators emphasize outcomes to the detriment of the process needed to educate, Oracle educators often ignore the outcomes, believing the process itself is sufficient. Agent Smith educators provide students with the comfort of direction and the satisfaction of a successfully completed project but leave students without the skills necessary to create their own success. In contrast, Oracle educators overlook students who need guidance and feedback. Students typically need a means of determining what they know and do not know, and in the absence of that guidance, they may remove themselves from a learning opportunity for fear of the pain of an academic or cocurricular failure.
Managing the Balancing Act
BETWEEN Agent Smith educators and Oracle educators are those who strike a balance between doing everything and doing nothing. They are the “Morpheus” educators, who are genuinely present for students during their educational journey. In The Matrix, Morpheus empowers Neo by showing that he believes in him. He provides guidance and then allows Neo to practice the skills he has learned. For example, during combat training, Morpheus tells Neo to stop thinking and start doing, and expresses confidence in Neo's abilities. Morpheus's words inspire Neo to trust himself. In the next scene, although Neo fails miserably at a task, he is able to use his newfound confidence to try again. Ultimately, he recognizes the world run by Agent Smith as orderly but not developmental and uses his abilities to defeat Smith.
In the cocurriculum, Morpheus educators encourage student leaders to think about how their actions affect the group and ask questions to help students see the larger context. Morpheus educators recognize that simply telling students the best way to accomplish their goals might be easier in the short run but may limit a student's learning in the long run. These educators know when to provide information, phrasing their insights as other perspectives to be considered rather than strict prescriptions for action. In this environment, students are allowed to make small mistakes in order to take big lessons from them. For example, the knowledge gained from a poorly organized meeting could result in a highly successful campuswide event in the future. Students can build on their failures through the support of an organization advisor who remains present for group members throughout their development and challenges students to critically analyze their thoughts and actions and to learn from them.
Morpheus faculty members encourage students to voice their ideas and challenge them to think in complex ways. When students express narrow opinions in their written work, a Morpheus educator encourages them to consider how they came to their opinions and to become more complex thinkers. Morpheus educators recognize that learning is often a messy process, filled with mistakes and opportunities for improvement that may create conflict between the student and the educator. During most of the film, Mor-pheus's lofty expectations of Neo create such conflict; Morpheus continually challenges Neo to look beyond the current extent of his learning, while Neo often questions Morpheus's statements and teaching methods. While Neo ultimately learns to trust Morpheus, the process is fraught with uncertainty. In classroom and cocurricular settings, educators set the stage by constructing clear expectations and then allowing students room to formulate their own understanding of the subject matter. Morpheus instructors teach students what is necessary for success, provide ample space for them to learn, carefully assess their performance, and share that assessment with students.
Most important, Morpheus educators listen to students and care about their perspectives. They engage students in open discussions and provide activities that place students in a position to make informed decisions. They are the educators who guide students to the door and help them understand what it means to go through it. Anderson, with his lack of experience, is uncertain about his role as a hall council officer and the skills needed to learn and develop. Neo's relationship with Morpheus allows Neo to defeat his enemies and reach his potential. The hall council advisor's constructive partnership with Anderson can shape Anderson's ability to learn the skills necessary for success in hall governance. At the beginning of the year, for example, Anderson might benefit from a meeting with his advisor to clarify his expected role in the group and to help him brainstorm ideas for the future. After structured activities that enable Anderson to test his leadership skills have been planned and executed, the advisor might press Anderson to critically evaluate his performance as well as the group's, enabling Anderson to assess the level of knowledge and skills they have attained. Posing hypothetical questions, especially ones based on alternatives that Anderson may have considered, might encourage Anderson to think in more complex ways about working with his peers. As the year progresses, increasingly challenging Anderson to think innovatively and to connect his current experiences with his future goals improves his odds of reaching his potential as a leader and a learner. Similarly, Morpheus challenges Neo to recognize his potential as one who could save the world. The film closes with Neo promising to show everyone “a world where anything is possible.” Balanced partnerships between students and educators can encourage and sustain campus environments filled with possibilities for growth, learning, and development.