Our Hawkes Student Ambassador Raegan Fisher interviewed Professor Jacob Kaltenbach, PhD, a multidisciplinary and professional studies professor at Purdue University Global. Professor Kaltenbach currently teaches composition courses in the English and Rhetoric Department at Purdue Global.
He has also previously taught in the Humanities Department, including various critical thinking, literature, and philosophy courses. In the future, he hopes to teach the new doctoral-level writing course for Purdue Global graduate students.
Professor Kaltenbach has been teaching for more than 30 years at universities across the country and around the world, including more than 20 years in the online format for Purdue Global. In this interview, Professor Kaltenbach shares his experiences using Hawkes and how it has supported student learning outcomes in their courses.
*Interview questions and responses have been slightly edited for content and clarity.
What do you find is your favorite thing about teaching?
I really take pleasure in helping our students better represent themselves using the written word to better express themselves and to integrate their critical thinking skills into their professional communication. At the same time, I learn so much from our students myself. I get the chance to teach students from all different disciplines. Our assignments encourage students to cover recent trends and changes in their fields, as well as their hobbies, communities, and careers. For example, our students write on community proposals for change in CM220. I get exposed to all these different, exciting ideas from these types of assignments—from human services, from the health fields, from industrial psychology, from entrepreneurship—which is almost like having a subscription to a wonderful magazine. I get exposed to so many new trends in different fields, and that keeps me interested in my work, in figuring out the best ways to help students leverage their existing professional communication skills for their career advancement. I have the opportunity to hear perspectives from all different regions of the country, as well as many people overseas.
How long have you been using Hawkes in your classroom?
I’ve been teaching with Hawkes in our English courses for about five years at this point. I participated in the early trials of Hawkes being integrated into our classes. We’ve seen some real benefits for our students and had the chance to really customize support for our students. Hawkes is one of our most essential tools to help target those different skill levels and different learning needs.
What would you say is your favorite thing about Hawkes and using it?
I defer to the students, and students tell me it challenges them. The same students will tell me they enjoy the content, the mode of delivery, the chance to build skills, and seeing their efforts validated through the Certification mode. That’s the kind of review we want to see from our students, right? I mean, you don’t want to hear, “This was easy, and I liked it,” and you don’t want to hear, “This was too hard, and I hated it.” They are saying, “This is really tough, but I enjoyed it.” I think that’s the sweet spot we want to see as educators.
Did you find that the students appreciated the opportunity to use the Practice mode as much as they personally needed to?
As a learner of other languages, if I’m learning Spanish or French, Russian or Chinese, and I am in a region or country where the language is spoken, I can go out on the street the next day and use a new skill I learned in the classroom. The moment I use it, it activates it, and it becomes real. There’s a real disconnect if you were just learning it theoretically and not applying it.
I think Hawkes’ model does that in a way because you’re relearning these skills that you touched on or learned by osmosis in grade school, but you’re putting them to work in your papers right away. Hawkes helps students reflect on what they’ll need to go back and redo. Students can connect areas they did not 100% internalize, and I think Hawkes helps them actually internalize the material.
Do you believe Hawkes stands out as a helpful resource among other resources that might be available to students?
Yeah, absolutely—our students are very busy. Many of our students are full-time working adults and often parents as well. I think, on the one hand, they don’t have time to look for many other tools. It’s really nice that Hawkes is integrated into our courses. Hawkes is also where the students get the sense that they’re receiving some extra help, and they’re getting it from an outside voice. What goes alongside that is our own Writing Center, and I think they work together quite nicely. Because our faculty has been involved in customizing our application of Hawkes, we’ve ensured continuity and correspondence between our resources and the Writing Center resources. The Writing Center resources stand out too, so I think that they’re a perfect complement. I wouldn’t want to see one without the other.
Have you found Hawkes to be helpful in building the students’ self-checking skills?
That’s what makes a good editor. I tell students who already have these really advanced professional writing skills, there’s always a place to learn from. I think you learn from what you do, and what many of our students can also learn to do is to become a better editor of their own work, which requires self-checking. I think Hawkes models that a little bit in its Certification method.
Have you noticed a difference with your students’ learning and grades since using Hawkes?
Absolutely—just the ability to refer our students to both Hawkes and the Writing Center—that helps diminish the frustration. We can cut down on the kind of deferred questions and issues that are going to affect student retention and success.
Additionally, many students defer their questions. This is like deferred maintenance on your house; it’s going to catch up with you eventually. That’s often why a paper fails. This can be a simple question such as, “Do I need another source here?” or “Do I need a better transition here?”
I think students are sometimes afraid to ask those questions of the instructor, who will also be involved in their assessment and grading process. I try to encourage students that there are no stupid questions. I’m not going to review your whole paper and give you a grade in advance of grading, but if you ask me, “Is my tone and voice consistent?” I’m going to look at it and give you an answer.
I think Hawkes helps students build that self-check skill, and I think it helps cover some of the questions that they might have and may not ask me. They get the answers for themselves through Hawkes, and if it doesn’t answer their question, it spurs them to communicate with me because it gives them a vocabulary. Students are afraid to ask a question because they don’t have the terminology. Hawkes gives you that terminology. The student can then realize, “OK, I’m having a problem with passive voice, so I’ll ask Professor Kaltenbach.”
The students are empowered and given that terminology to come back with some measure of expertise to the classroom space. I think that builds confidence. I’m pretty sure we’ve seen an increase in our retention and success rates in CM107 over the last five years, and I don’t think we can ignore Hawkes as a contributor to that increase.
Do you have anything else you want to add or any information you would like to share for other students using Hawkes?
I think that Hawkes’ approach definitely improves our students’ basic skills, and it improves their eventual writing assignment grades. We don’t offer test scores, so I can’t say it boosts our students’ test scores in this way, but it boosts your final assignment grades. These skills need continuous revisiting. They need continuous improvement, and the approach that Hawkes offers to adult learning is very effective, as is its platform design. I can’t imagine our current course without Hawkes as part of its learning environment. I really appreciate the opportunities that Hawkes has offered many of our students to succeed in the CM107 class and outside the courses.
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