Whitney Ransom

My master’s thesis within the Instructional Psychology & Technology Department at Brigham Young University is on contributing factors to improved teaching and learning. This is a topic that I feel is really important and also one that I feel will yield information and results that can benefit faculty and administrators, not only at BYU, but hopefully throughout the world.

Some of the individuals who have had the greatest impact on my life have been teachers. These are individuals who have mentored, encouraged, loved, and assisted me through the years. They have taught me about various types of subject matter, but usually I have learned more from them by their examples. Thank heaven for teachers!

My target audience for my study is a pool of more than 300 BYU faculty members who have made significant improvement in their teaching over a three-year period. I just sent out the initial survey on Friday, and will start doing some of the interviews next week!

I am excited to talk to the faculty about the things they have done to improve. I’m hoping that part of the results from the study will show that all faculty can become better in their teaching, regardless of their personality, the subject matter they teach, their class size, or any other factor.

Last Friday I was talking with Dr. Russ Osguthorpe, the Director at the Center for Teaching and Learning at BYU. He started telling me about an experience he had as a mission president. He said that sometimes he would have missionaries who would tell him that they just didn’t have the desire to serve. He told me he didn’t have the perfect solution for them at the time, but later he came up with the 3-D process. The three D’s are desire, decide, and determine.

Dr. Osguthorpe said that if individuals do not have the desire to accomplish something, they should skip past that step, and focus more on the decide step. Of course these three D’s work with all aspects of life. For example, say you are working on a paper, and you know you should add to it every day, but you just don’t feel like it. It’s more important to just decide that you are going to work on the paper, and then do it. As you are deciding and acting, the desire comes.

I have reflected on these words from Dr. Osguthrope and they really work. I go running Monday through Saturday. Some mornings, especially in the winter, I am not extremely excited about going outside to run in the freezing cold weather. However, I just skip past that desire part and move onto the decide step. I determine that I will run and put on my running shoes. Once I am out running, I am always happy that I made the decision to go.

So, the next time you are lacking desire on something that you know you should do, remember the three D’s: Desire, Decide, Determine.