Online Drivers Exercise

Cohort: 2017
Fellow: Clint Tuttle

Since my first semester at UT (Fall 2011) I’ve taught about 10,000 students across all colleges. From this immense amount of student interaction, I’ve come to believe that many of our students lack the tools and techniques to define their own personal path to success and are not confident in how to best make decisions about their future.  As a result of this, I believe many students are seeking what they see as a “safe path” (e.g. most popular major or one with greatest job prospects) rather than the one that aligns to their own passions.  Frequently I see students (business and non-business majors) who have set goals without being able to explain what drove them to set the goal.  How does this impact teaching?  Simply put, if students know what drives them, they’ll be confident in their decisions to pursue a specific career path. Before we help students determine what their goals are, they must know what drives them.  Before they can determine what drives them, we need to help them understand the different parts of a career they can potentially value. It will be important to accept that what one person values is not necessarily what another person will value. The goal of the project is to create an exercise for students to complete related to career paths. This exercise doesn’t teach the students what to think but how to think. It gives them a framework to better understand how to logically make this decision as individuals. This means students will be more confident in their choices of prospective career paths. The online format of the exercise will also encourage students to see that their views are not odd or weird by showing them how other students share their value.  Ultimately it will be encouraging them to choose what they truly want and not what they think they’re supposed to want. I have seen that many students lack the tools and techniques to define their own personal path to success and lack confidence in making decisions about their futures. They seek a “safe path” rather than the one that aligns to their own passions. Every teacher at some point has taught a disengaged student who was more concerned about the grade than the learning. A student who knows why they’re in pursuit of certain knowledge can be more engaged and learn better. My PTF project aims to provide a simple exercise (http://www.driversexercise.com/) that allows students to recognize what drives them and use that knowledge to set priorities and make decisions about their future.