Episode 6- Soft Skills

This month on Ed. Andy and Twyla sit down with Dr. Ashley Brinkman, English Faculty at Lone Star College Kingwood, to discuss Soft Skills and the Hidden Curriculum that students should be aware of as they navigate the college experience. 

For further information about Ed. Please visit our website at www.ed.buzzsprout.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

That did not go well. That did not start to not go well. This month on Ed, Andy and Twyla sit down with Dr. Ashley Brinkman, English faculty at Lone Star College Kingwood, to discuss soft skills and the hidden curriculum that students should be aware of as they navigate the college experience. All of this on episode six of Ed. And we are here with episode six of Ed. And this is our episode on soft skills. I think they've been excited about this one for a while because our students need help.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Welcome back, everyone.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Welcome back to Twilight. Twilight's here for the whole episode this time. And we are joined by the associate professor of English. Well, I say the associate, like there's only one an associate professor of English here at Lone Star Kingwood, Ashley Brinkman. Thank you for joining us.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

And I think you are an expert in soft skills, but if you want to introduce yourself a little bit and tell us a little bit about the audience about yourself, uh I I know some things about you, but not tons. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

All right. Well, I am a full-time faculty member here in English. Uh before I worked here, I worked for one of our competitors, um, which will remain unnamed. Um before that, I taught in some of our early college high schools. And before that, I pursued a PhD in New York. Uh, my specialty is in pre-17th century British literature. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Nothing wrong with that.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Which I find very interesting. Some of our students do, I'm sure. A few.

unknown 2:17

A few.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Is that I don't I don't know. I'm terrible with centuries. Is that Shakespeare? Is that Shakespeare?

SPEAKER_02 2:23

Okay, good.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Yeah, that's the good stuff. I that's stuff I like.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

Yes, it is hard. So I do teach British literature literature here pretty much every semester online, mostly dual credit classes.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Well, then this is really relevant. So these soft skills for dual credit students, but also for all of our students, right? Um, is gonna be a a really interesting conversation. So I'm excited to get to get started.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

So I think first we need to define. So let's uh let's what are what are soft skills? So what what are we what are we considering to be a soft skill?

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Yeah. So we're that's a that's a really good question. So we're gonna be talking about soft skills in the first segment. We're gonna be talking about the hidden curriculum, uh, specific to those first generation students and uh those dual credit students that we're that we're talking about. So uh how would you define soft skills? What are we talking about when we talk about soft skills? Just kind of what comes to mind.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

For me, it's personal and interpersonal skills that are transferable and that largely drive success and motivation and getting things done and help people self-regulate.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Yeah. But what what do you mean? Like what when we think of transferable skills, soft skills, can you give me some examples?

SPEAKER_02 3:43

Sure. So communication's the obvious one. Yeah. And as a listener of the podcast, I feel like you've been circle circling around this topic um for several episodes. Right. Um, communication, time management, which I know you guys have discussed on an earlier episode, being accountable, being proactive. Um dealing with people in a respectful way, being organized, motivating yourself to do hard things that you don't like. All these sort of traits that successful people have but are hard to develop.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that this is something that our students deal with, but it's something that we deal with as well. So we can always work to improve those soft skills. Um, what are some of the soft skills, Andy, that you see that our students are perhaps deficient in?

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Email. Uh that's probably the number one thing that I think about is how a student emails a professor. Um hey, dude. Uh, hey, bud. Um so I'm like, I'm not your dude. I'm not your bud. Uh, I'm your professor. And while I'm I'm very I'm I'm not, I don't make them call me sir, I don't make them call me Mr. Um, I know like a couple episodes ago, I think Sharon was calling me Professor Lester. I don't even make them call me that either. Um, it's either, you know, I'm like, you can call me Andy, call me Mr. Andy if you really need to. Um, but I still expect an email to be, you know, it just simple, good morning. I have a question. Not, hey dude, what should do? Like, can you tell me why I got an F on this? Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Just normal, basic soft skills that that would advance us. You know, I have an article here by the Harvard Business Review that says uh titled Soft Skills Matter Now More Than Ever, according to new research. And this was in August of 2025. But it it talks about how technology like generative AI reshapes the workplace. It's really, really important for all of us to understand that that's what makes us human, right? These soft skills like treating people with respect and uh knowing those uh foundational humanity type things, like greeting people with a good morning or um treating people with respect and and professional communication and and all of those types of things. Um, but it it discusses the fact that when we this uh this article, it organized skills into foundational skills like reading, comprehension, math skills, and the ability to work well in teams and those advanced technical skills. And when you when you evaluate those, the people with more um the higher soft skills, I'm not saying that right, but um, they did better in their careers. They were more successful in college, and um, and that's really important for our students to know. So you might be taking a math class, but you can still practice those soft skills. So um I know that you and I were in a cohort, a professional development program together this last year, and that was one of your projects, right? Tell us about your project that you worked on.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

So for our cohort, I divine designed a series of videos, and those videos were supposed to highlight, exaggerate, and teach students about soft skills. So you actually starred in one of them, and so did you, Andy. Um, they're both very talented. Um and essentially we all played students um in exaggerated but true scenarios um involving procrastination, inappropriate communication, letting themselves fail, um, and all sorts of um soft skills. And the videos I then showed to my classes as part of a lesson series, the students had to reflect on them um and try to relate to them, and they'd all seen every scenario happen. Sometimes they were honest and said they were the one, you know, who used AI or whatever. But um it was a really fun activity, but it did arise from a pattern I was noticing in my students. Um I teach a gateway course, English 1301. So every single person has to take it. And if you want to be a nurse, you have to make an A in it. The course is a crucial course for the associate's degree. And I noticed that often the line between passing and failing came down not to ability, but to soft skills.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Right.

SPEAKER_02 8:45

So the students who couldn't follow through or who couldn't get off their phone or who saw they were failing and didn't reach out, they would often fail the course when they were perfectly capable of passing it. So I thought when I spoke to them, they all seemed to know what soft skills were and that they were important, but that's all they were were academic concepts or things they had talked about. They weren't real things to put into practice. And so I made the videos showing what happens when there's an absence of them to try to prompt some introspection and maybe get the students to practice those soft skills.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Do you think it was successful?

SPEAKER_02 9:29

It's hard to say. I did notice a increase in respectful communication from those students because communication was actually the first one I I showed in one of them. It wasn't an email communication, it was a face-to-face, and Twila confronted me about her grade. Um, so I did notice I didn't get as many heated confrontations when I show those videos. So I do like to think they help a little bit. Now, did they make every student in my class develop soft skills and pass? No, but I think soft skills you actually have to develop and keep practicing them.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Right.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

So if you're not in the habit of having to meet deadlines, you might actually be bad at time management because you just don't do it.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Well, and there's absolutely a professional value to it as well. Uh studies by institutions like Harvard and Stanford actually found that 75 to 85% of long-term job success is due to soft skills. Not technical knowledge, not, you know, your GPA. Um, it is soft skills.

SPEAKER_03 10:40

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

You're not getting any, you're not getting the job. 88% of employers want it. Only 51% of students think that it's important.

SPEAKER_02 10:49

Wow. It's a pretty big discrepancy.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

That's insane. Yeah. And it's this like age of students that's growing up and thinking, I don't problem solving. Why is problem solving something that I need to have? Right. Good luck in escape rooms.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

Right. Well, and I did see an article that said due to AI taking over many jobs, the people who are safest are older employees that have the soft skills. There's a soft skills gap between older people and younger people. Right. And you would think that younger people would be cheaper labor, but companies are willing to pay people more for the soft skills.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Right. Yeah. You're absolutely right. And in the the article that I was referring to earlier, it it talks about that those those social skills, communication, empathy, conflict resolution, and the ability to coordinate are really, really valuable as well.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

So absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

I want to go to one other question that that I had, and that's the the reference that I made to the hidden curriculum. So we've been referring to soft skills, but in addition, we have this concept of the hidden curriculum. Have y'all heard of the hidden curriculum in university in the university setting?

SPEAKER_00 12:06

I have because we've talked about it, but yes. Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

But so a lot of people haven't. And whenever I started doing a little bit of research in the the hidden curriculum, the hidden curriculum, um, you know, I was a first generation college student. So I had no idea about how to quote unquote do college. And there was a lot of hidden curriculum in the university setting. So there were, luckily, I had some uh amazing mentors and advisors once I got to campus, but my my parents were were really no help to me in navigating the college system. So the hidden curriculum is the unwritten rules and invisible barriers in higher education, and they impact a student's experience and they can impact their success. So there's things like uh, I don't know, what is a syllabus? There's things like going to see a professor in their office hours or what are office hours and and understanding that these students need to understand not only their actual curriculum, but the hidden curriculum in order to be successful. There's so much more than just the textbook. Um, and so there's some really great information on as faculty what we can do to help kind of bridge the gap or to to help students understand the hidden curriculum. I know uh you were teasing me a little bit, Andy, but I didn't have a chance to read um all of the books that I wanted to read about the teasing in jest.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Teasing in jest.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

I know. But there's some great resources out there about the hidden curriculum. Um, and there some of them are called literally the hidden curriculum. So it's on my my anti-library book, my my book list to to be read. But um it I wanted to to kind of get your insight into how do you help those students who are maybe not only lacking in soft skills, but the resources it because they don't know what to do to be successful in college. What do you do?

SPEAKER_02 14:10

It's really hard because it's not just that they don't have soft skills, it's a lot of the K-12 schools aren't even teaching things like studying anymore. Everything's done on the computer, and so they don't they don't have a lot of background knowledge on being a student in general, right? It's sort of like they're put in this holding pattern. And so it's really hard to address everything at once in 16 weeks, plus your content. Yeah, and so I'm lucky to teach in a content agnostic discipline English. And so I can fold in readings, critical thinking activities that center on these types of things and not take away from my syllabus. But I'm lucky that way, and also not everybody in English is going to do that. They may be more interested in teaching something else.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

And um, not other subjects aren't so lucky.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:14

You can't stop college algebra, which is another gateway course for a lesson on management or how to go see an advisor, or I had a student email me. I've decided for personal reasons to drop my classes. How do I do it? And so I could handle that over email.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

But you there she was brave enough to ask me, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:38

And thankfully they were because they didn't get to an ODR or an MDR where they get dropped, where they have that withdrawal on their transcript. They didn't get to, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Well, I think what what you said is really important. And I think as faculty, we we can't be expected to do it during our class time. I think that's really an important distinction because we we don't have the time. We we can't use up the classroom minutes to do that, but to facilitate that, opening that relationship up to say, you know, I I do have those office hours and I am available, you know. Maybe, you know, we have the mentoring relationships that are options on campus to to facilitate a club dynamic and all of those types of things so that you can you there's the all the different centers and the things like that that hopefully people will start to learn about that hidden curriculum.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

I think I'm gonna push it back on you a little bit. How did you learn?

SPEAKER_01 16:34

How did I learn? Yeah, good question. Uh it was about the advisors and the the people that I had on campus that that I that had poured into my life, you know, it was the um the people that I learned to trust and and things like that. It wasn't it wasn't necessarily the professors during class for sure. It was the ones that um then invited me to, you know, say, hey, you know, come visit. We've got a club, we've got a a thing that we can pour into you outside of class time. Because you don't have time when you're in class to um to teach those extra things.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

I think for me, it was because I did community college to start too. I think for me, it was my speech coach who kept asking, you know, have you signed up for classes yet? Have you have you done this? Have you done that?

SPEAKER_03 17:20

Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Thankfully, having those people, I guess, in your life and be able to teach you how to do those things is extremely important. But the problem is not everybody's gonna get those things. So is it and I I want to say we need a class on it. And I know that we kind of have a class on it already.

SPEAKER_03 17:39

Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

But I don't know, and again, I think that's another, I think that's the problem that you talked about earlier, is it's one of those classes that has that open concept, and you kind of do whatever you want to do, and they're not all getting the same thing. But how do we orient these college students to get there, to get to that same thing? And is it an orientation? I know that we do an orientation, but I don't think it's a required orientation.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

No, and they give give a lot of information at the orientation. You can't sit down and give them all the information, they won't retain it. So it's like you need constant or regular contact with them and do little lessons here and there and help them build those skills and experience along the way. And it's almost like they need some sort of cohort, but we have close to a hundred thousand students system-wide, like on our scale. How do we roll this sort of thing out?

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Yeah, it's a question. I don't know if we can answer it here, right? But I think it's just a question of I think colleges need to really strap down and focus on this as a requirement. And something I've preached for years.

SPEAKER_03 18:58

Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

It's something I preached when I was at Prairie View, it's something I preached when I was at McNeese. Because when I was at Illinois State, we had this.

SPEAKER_03 19:05

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

We have that there were two classes that students were required to take in their first semester. They were required to take uh speech class. They had to take their speech class their first semester, every student. Because it's brilliant, because it's brilliant, exactly. And they had to take a how to go to college class.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

I don't remember it was had a name for it. I think it was called um critical thinking or it was something they gave it a fancy name, but it was basically here are the soft skills you need to be a college student.

SPEAKER_03 19:36

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

And it was taught by speech professors, it was taught by English professors because they're the ones who were able to, you know, not only bring in that knowledge, but also bring in here's how you tie it to an educational setting.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Yeah. Well, and until we're able to facilitate system-wide change, what can we do, each and every one of us, just on our own? We can be there a few minutes before class starts and we can share our stories with our students and we can be the one person, right? We can do the one thing that we can do. So um, you know, let's start somewhere with teaching the soft skills and the hidden curriculum.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

And be a model too. So when you reply in an email, reply professionally. Don't reply yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Hey, bro.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Hey, bro. Right. I think we'll take a break and uh we'll get to our next segment about communication with professors next. And we're back. And this uh time we are talking about communication with your professors. How do you talk to a professor? How do you email a professor? I think we we sort of like talked about the bad things first, but when you're talking to a professor, what what things do you need to include in that email? What needs to be there so that your professor doesn't pull their hair out?

SPEAKER_02 21:04

I like my hair.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

I do too.

SPEAKER_02 21:07

I would say definitely a salutation.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

Um, and then they need to identify what section they're in. Yes. So they don't realize that we teach five plus sections. Yes. And we can answer their question more quickly if we can pull up the class that they're in and pull them up. And then a brief overview of what the problem is. I've gotten emails that said, hey, you gave me an F and I'm not sure on what assignment in what class. If they're asking for clarification on what I said on the rubric, they're just upset or what the goal is of the communication.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

Yeah, and that's and that's what I really want. I want all of those things. And I want a list. A list of what you want. Give it to me in a number format. One here, two here, three here, or even dashes. Give me a list of things. Because if you give me a list of things, then I can make you a list of things back.

SPEAKER_03 22:14

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

I can respond, you know, here's your my answer to one, here's my answer to two, here's my answer to three. Like I think that's the quintessential, easiest way to send an email.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

But I want to add to that. I really want also your name at the end of it. I want you to close with your name and the best way to reach you back. You know, maybe it's an email, or sometimes it's easiest to follow up with a phone call. So a lot of times an email is is fine, but sign your name because most of the time our students are emailing us from the LMS, but um I want you to still sign your name.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Even though they're not supposed to. But yeah, no, I want your name. I want to know who you are because if I don't know who you are, I can't find you and I can't figure out what your actual problem is.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Right. So are there things that we don't want them to put in an email? So I know we we talked about some of the things like, hey, dude, right? We don't want we don't want that. Are there other things that you don't want in an email?

SPEAKER_00 23:20

I don't want you to argue in an email. If you want to have a conversation about a grade, if you want to have a conversation about, you know, anything dealing with what I've given you in terms of feedback, my response is always going to be, did you read the feedback? And nine times out of ten, they haven't. So I'm always going to push you back to that feedback. That's what it's always going to happen. And if you just sit there and argue and argue and argue with me, it makes me less and less inclined to want to talk to you.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

That's a good thought. Ashley, what about you?

SPEAKER_02 23:52

I agree. Um, I don't like the arguing, and I don't like it when people make assumptions or editorialize, I prefer it to be neutral and professional because people see things, they make assumptions. So if I have a policy about you know things being timed, and someone goes to the testing center because they have an accommodation, someone may say, You're giving them longer. You must like them more. No, I'm following the law. And so making assumptions uh when you don't have the information and probing for things you can't know.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

Yeah, I appreciate that. And one of the other things that you know, we're we're sharing things that we don't necessarily like or appreciate uh is I don't like back-to-back-to-back emails. So if you can, like you've said, kind of give me a list of all the things that that I need and or questions that you have in one email, um, that prevents receiving two or three or four emails in a row from the same person. Because as you mentioned, we have five or more sections, each of those having 20 plus students in them. We have a lot of students. And if each of them send us back-to-back-to-back emails, that just takes a lot longer to respond to.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Unless I ask for it, don't submit an assignment to me in an email. Don't send me your assignment.

SPEAKER_03 25:24

Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

I'm not gonna find it. I'm not gonna, if I'm I'm using an LMS, using a language man, or sorry, not language, a learning management system. I'm using that system for a reason. I'm using it because it is the easiest repository for all of your assignments. Right. Put it in the assignment.

SPEAKER_03 25:42

Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

And if it's late, then it's late and you don't get to put it there. And that's, you know, that's the policy I have. And accept that policy and don't email me and say reverse the policy.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Right. You know, it sounds like we're being really, you know, hard-nosed about this, but there are reasons for this professional communication and and these policies that we have in place. And the other thing that to consider is the fact that that we have policies as well. So we don't get emails just from our students, right? We receive emails from all throughout the system and other faculties and and our boss as well. And so we have policies and procedures that we have to follow when responding to not only to students, but to to processing all of the emails that we receive. So that's a another consideration. And and sometimes it's a lot, like it's a lot of emails that we have to process. Um, I thought it was really interesting when I was doing some research for the professional communication guidelines. Um, there was a policy that was posted on by the University of Arizona. This is actually from the College of Nursing, but it was professional communication guidelines for students, faculty, and staff. And it talks about not only the lines of communication, but it gave some feedback on when sending emails, consider not only the line of communication before sending additional emails, because sometimes, you know, students will send an email, and if they don't get an email from you like that day, they'll then send one to your boss. Well, that's not necessarily appropriate, right? But it gives some guidelines on students to students on on what you would send in a follow-up email. So I appreciated that. Um, and you know, something to consider. Maybe I'll share that with my students in in the future because sometimes I do miss an email, right? And I I'll own that, I'll take accountability for that. Uh, because sometimes if you send an email at five o'clock on a Friday, I I will miss it, right? I I won't get to it until Monday. And I appreciate that follow-up email, but you don't have to be rude about it, right? So, what other kinds of communication other than than emails do we have with our professors, though? Office hours, office hours, what student hours, office hours?

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Student hours, office hours. I mean, we we're kind of we don't really have necessarily office hours, right? But we have student hours and we just, you know, students can come and find us.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

And I want students to come and see me.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

It's not a bother. It's not a bird.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

I like when students come by. I like when students come and say hi. I've got Legos in the office. Come, come, I have Legos down there you can play, like I can pull them out and you can play with Legos. That's not why I want you to come to my office. I want you to come to my office to ask me questions. And and face-to-face communication works so much better than computer-mediated communication. So come and ask me a question. You're gonna get more rich response if you come and talk to me in my office rather than or even after class. Come and talk to me after class. Have a we can have a normal conversation, we can talk about it, we can sit down and discuss things rather than relying solely on computer-mediated communication.

SPEAKER_02 28:57

Absolutely. I I agree with that completely. Um, and then I think sometimes students they're busy, they have lives outside of class, they want to have a conversation that's not classroom appropriate, say about their grade or some fault they're finding with you, and they want to do it at the front of the classroom before or right after class when there are a bunch of people and it's not appropriate. So I think the office hours are a great time to come address those issues because I'm not going to pull up my D2L and show the class your grades. I'm not going to reverse my policy in front of a whole class. So you aren't probably, I will tell you this is a conversation for my office.

SPEAKER_01 29:45

Right.

SPEAKER_02 29:46

And so I think the office hours are a great space.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

Yeah, absolutely. I never went to office hours whenever I was a here as a community college student because I I thought that it was only whenever you were in trouble.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

It's intimidating. It's an intimidating response it's an intimidating experience to go to an office. Um, and I think it just it's on us as professors to reduce that intimidation.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

So to make students feel comfortable.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

You know, so so since I was so intimidated, I have made this as a part of my assignment. So what I do is I so I teach nonverbal, and and one of the things I do is I bring, we call it a field trip, but I bring all of my students into our office suite and I show them where my office is. And we do like a nonverbal, what messages am I sending? But really what I'm doing is I'm just showing them that my office is not a scary place. I show them where it is, and I I say, okay, what all do you see in my office? What messages am I sending by, you know, the artifacts that I'm displaying in my office and things like that? But I have many more students who will come to my office now that they know where it's at, they know that it's not a scary place. And I encourage them to go and check out the offices of their other faculty members. Because you're right, it's not supposed to be so intimidating. But because of the power dynamics that we have, it's difficult for students to be proactive and to go and communicate with their professors if they don't know where their offices are and they don't really understand what these office hours or student hours are. We've even tried to change the name of it, right? The to student hours because it's really about students. They don't want to interrupt us, right, while we're working, but that those times are for them.

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Absolutely. So I think uh that's a good discussion about communication with professors. I think we're good there. So we're gonna go ahead and take a break. And when we come back, we'll talk about accountability and motivation. And we're back. We're gonna talk a little bit about accountability and motivation as it relates to soft skills. And accountability is what your course this semester is all about. Ashley, tell us a little about tell us about this and what you've uh what you've done.

SPEAKER_02 32:13

Okay, so for English 1301, I always find that building up to a research assignment, having a common set of texts to talk about, and then just general background knowledge, students are much more successful when everything is anchored. So I've done classes on love. I did a class on the 1990s at one point. So this semester, I really noticed not just here at school, but in general, there seems to be some sort of accountability crisis. No one wants to take responsibility for their actions. And so I thought this is a soft skill. It's actually one of our core learning objectives. Um, and it's a deeply interesting topic about being responsible and accountable, and so that students can make it relatable to their life, think about it in a larger critical term, critical thinking terms. So I went ahead and designed this course. And so it's divided into multiple units. I have a unit on personal responsibility and accountability in extreme situations. So we actually look at cases of people who commit crimes while sleepwalking. Wow. People who commit crimes while have they have brain tumors where there's some sort of biological disturbance or disease that leads these people to act in ways that are out of character. And that, you know, opens the door for okay, well, if these people have a biological reason, right? What about us when we don't have, you know. Yeah, but those are some really interesting conversations. Yeah, really interesting conversations. We do a project where they have to pick a notorious criminal or a cult and look at the actions and how the media frames responsibility and accountability. Um, we talk about it in a school setting. We talk about some of these famous psychology experiments like the Milgram experiment or Zimbardo's Stanford Prison, the bystander effect, and how responsibility uh and accountability are theorized and what that means for us. And so we've had some really powerful conversations. I'd have I've had some students do really interesting work, but it always comes back to this is still a real life skill. And so we're talking about it, you know, in terms of the criminal justice system, but there's it an element that's relevant right now, like why didn't you do your homework? Right. Um, you know, so it's been it's been a great class, and we've had some great discussions about what they think their responsible. I had an interesting prompt where I ask them what they think the college's responsibility to them is to help them be successful. Thinking about education as a two-way street. It's a dual, dually responsible. We aren't the only people responsible for their learning, they're responsible for their own learning. Yeah. And so we've had some great conversations about students. Well, I should, you know, advocate for myself. I should go to tutoring if I need the help. I should reach out. Now they're saying that and there's doing it, of course. Right. But at least we're starting to think about these topics and issues. And it's been it's been a great class.

SPEAKER_01 35:30

That's really fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 35:31

Yeah, absolutely. I want to take it. Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

No, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

No, I was gonna say it I was reading a an article about uh, let's see, this one was from thefacultyfocus.com about assigning accountability partners. But before we get to accountability partners, I know we want to talk about that. It talked about how, you know, a lot of times we use the term accountability and holding students accountable and things like that. And it has a kind of a negative connotation to it. But I really love, and what you were saying is uh kind of reiterated in this article. And it says, what if accountability wasn't rooted in punishment, revenge, or superficiality, but it rooted in our values, growth, and transformation. And the work of accountability was held so that people who got to practice it truly practiced it. It was it was talking further in the article about how it is that shared, you know, responsibility. It's not just about holding, like where we have the power to hold students accountable, but where they learn how to be accountable and to be responsible for their own learning. And I think that's such a great soft skill because whenever you're an adult or whenever you know, like in the quote unquote real world, which is our goal, right? To prepare them for the real world, we are accountable to ourselves, to our own learning, to our own, you know, whatever things need to be done. And I think that's really important.

SPEAKER_02 37:03

Right. And we're accountable to our families, right, our friends, even. Um, and so I I like the idea of accountability being more restorative and about repairing damage that's been done. And in some cases, say if a student uses AI and gets caught and gets a zero, it may you, you know, they may have to take responsibility for the actions and take the consequence, but they have opportunities in future assignments to make it right, to build that trust again, to engage in the learning process. And so they shouldn't think of it as a one-time incident either. It's a process of growth, like read this article saying.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

Yeah, absolutely. And I think along with accountability, conscientiousness, just being conscious of your actions, being, you know, being conscious of how you respond and react to people. Research from the University of Chicago has actually found that conscientiousness is actually a predictor of how many years of college you complete, how much education you've completed, not your ability to do math problems, not your ability to uh, you know, communicate well. And although communicate well, I think is a soft skill, but not your ability to, you know, write an English paper, your conscientiousness.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

Yeah, I I believe that because being conscientious and and self-aware and and things like that, I think it ties in with accountability and and accountability to e each other, accountability to ourselves, because I think that there's a a lot of overlap there, but that self-awareness and again, all of these are self are soft skills that we're that we're learning and and talking about. But yeah, I I could see that that research being, I can see that kind of in my own, in myself and in um some of some one of what I'm seeing in my students as well. Um I've just started this book, but um our chancellor talked about it a couple of I guess a couple of months ago now, and um I ordered it, but it's called Extreme Ownership, how US Navy SEALs lead and win. And it talks about how, and I recommended my my kiddos read it with me. So that's that's a very slow process where we're we're reading it together. But I'm seeing it in in my own teenage children, how it's really easy to not take ownership, whether it is of just of doing the dishes, you know, the dishes didn't get done. Well, it wasn't my job today, right? But just not taking ownership of the things that quote unquote don't really matter or it wasn't quote unquote my job. Well, it's the job of the household, right? It's the job, it's a job that needs to be done. And in this book, it talks about specifically from leadership, a leadership point of view, it's the leader's job, it is the job of the whole team. And so the leader is taking that ownership. And so this is extreme ownership, but accountability is kind of that same thing when you have that accountability to yourself and and of the of the team, um, I think that there's a lot of value in that.

SPEAKER_00 40:15

So I think that falls into leadership. I think you know, we expect our leaders to pick up Slack when things happen. Um, and and how much how much how much does that effort have to keep going before we all just decide to pitch in and say, you know what? If you know, if there's a piece of trash on the ground, the trash person's not here, I'm just gonna leave that trash on the ground. No, right, pick it up. Why are why are you just it takes two seconds to walk over, pick it up, and toss it into the trash bin.

SPEAKER_03 40:47

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:47

It it and you know, if we have that conscientiousness and we have that, you know, extreme ownership, as you said, I think we have a better society.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

Right. And I think that's where, you know, accountability and personal responsibility, all of these soft skills that we're talking about, I think, you know, they they're not part of our, you know, as SLOs, or they're not part of our learning outcomes for each of our classes, but we can embed them like Ashley's doing. Well, they are yours.

SPEAKER_02 41:19

One and own it is one of our LSC values. Right. Um, so I mean, the institution does care about them.

SPEAKER_01 41:27

Right.

SPEAKER_02 41:27

And the core objectives are thing our things our workforce partners care about. So I definitely think, yes, embedding them um in our courses and giving the students the opportunity to learn the skill. And I think if we frame it as a skill, right, taking responsibility for your action is a skill. It's easy not to do it.

SPEAKER_01 41:48

It is, it is.

SPEAKER_02 41:49

It, you know, and and there's doing it and doing it in a non-dramatic way. Um, it's tied to questions of ethics.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

And so, so practically speaking, let's say I didn't have a whole class built around accountability, which sounds amazingly cool. And like Andy said, I would love to take that class. But how could we build uh accountability, maybe accountability partners into a class that we teach? How do you do you do something like that in your classes, Andy?

SPEAKER_00 42:21

I don't really do anything like that, but I do group work. And I think, you know, with the group work, you have some of that accountability part. You have to learn accountability. You have to absolutely learn to be accountable because if you don't do your part, I have embedded as an anonymous group evaluations where they can just say they didn't do it.

SPEAKER_01 42:39

Right.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

And if they didn't now your grade is affected.

SPEAKER_01 42:43

Right. So those group evaluations and uh check-ins with groups and and things like that. For my group project, so we work together in groups as well, and we have we actually assigned, I let the students assign leadership roles within their groups, and they're responsible for leading the team for a particular part of the group project, and they are accountable for turning in that part of the project. Um, and so there's accountability built in there, but accountability partners, uh, I've toyed with the idea, and I I know some faculty do you know encourage students to uh exchange contact information or or kind of build in a study buddy kind of situation on the fence as to whether or not I do that. I have some dual credit classes and I have some uh classes that I I haven't enforced it. But I I encourage students if you want to have a you know, a study buddy, accountability partner, um, kind of a natural it occurs naturally in some classes, um, but I do think it's a it's a good idea in theory to to do that. But I don't force it. Um but accountability partners are are something that I think is a is a good thing. Um in this article uh that I was referring to earlier. the faculty focus, it talks about how to introduce accountability partners in the course. And uh it does talk about the um the reflecting on the the support structure just support structures that we have on campuses and then you know partnering people up and you know developing group works and and things like that. But um I was just wondering how y'all did it practically.

SPEAKER_02 44:26

You could do that almost in a controlled way, like have the students write some joke about their process honestly reflecting. You could even have it do have them do it anonymously and then sort of rotate the papers and have students offer insight on how they could have been more responsible in a respectful way. And so then they do get some external feedback from a partner but it's not the constant I've got to check in, I've got to have this partner or even self-assessments. I've now made part of my major paper grades them giving me a response to your feedback where they have to I will ask them why did you make this choice or you might have done this instead and they have to think about it and consider. And so in that way it's not as formalized but it's still sort of pushing that skill in it's not necessarily marked.

SPEAKER_01 45:18

Right. Yeah no I I understand that now I'm gonna I'm gonna go off script here but I know a lot of our our podcast today has been focused on students and at the beginning of the semester when this will air uh all of these soft skills are kind of focused on students but kind of to recalibrate at the beginning of the year in January when this airs we you know as faculty and staff we can all recalibrate a little bit you know brush up on our soft skills and you know we're we've talked about organization and respect and prioritizing things and um all of these soft skills what advice do you have for faculty and staff and um administrators and anybody else who's listening to this on a you know a quick brush up on soft skills what advice do you have for you know being a better well-rounded soft skills kind of person don't beat yourself up if you're not getting there I think that's that's the biggest thing because I I know at the beginning of a semester I'm just coming off you know the break I'm tired um or I'm you know not completely you know 100% you know well rested yet and now it's like oh here we go jump right in again um so I don't think you know I think it's you know just take it one day at a time but also remember that your students are taking it one day at a time as well.

SPEAKER_00 46:47

That's good advice um don't be grumpy I think that's I think that's a soft skill don't be grumpy uh but I think it's it's really just when you get back into that groove like get back into that groove and try to get in back into that groove as quickly as you can.

SPEAKER_01 47:06

That's good advice what about you?

SPEAKER_02 47:07

I would echo Andy just be kind to yourself be kind to your students and then be realistic um you know but also be honest with yourself without being overly critical.

unknown 47:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 47:22

Yeah that's good. That's great. Thank you so much for joining us Ashley thank you for having me and uh we will see you next month this has been Ed, a frank discussion about topics that matter in education. The views expressed in this episode are those of the host, co-host and any guests. They do not reflect the views or values of Loon Star College. For further information about Ed, please visit our website at www dot dot buzzsprout dot com. Later this month on Ed, a bonus discussion on AI in education. Ed was produced by Andy Luster and TwilaChoy, music provided by Laborio Conti