We chat. We message. But, ... Do we converse?

Real world conversations seem to be getting rarer by the day.  For instance, even until a decade ago, the break during class time was when the room was noisiest thanks to students conversing with each other.  Calling the class to order typically ended that noise and it was back to me droning on and on and students trying their best to keep awake.

It is a different world, and a different classroom setting now.  The break time is often quiet--students are almost always hunched over their smartphones, texting and chatting.  Sometimes, I joke that they are probably texting students sitting only two seats away!

Such behavior is not unique in the classroom alone and is played out seemingly everywhere, sometimes even among family members in the same home.

Perhaps an irony that an introverted blogger worries about the death of conversation.  But, keep in mind that introvert does not mean anti-social ;)  While I might not be the nonstop chatterbox like, well, you know who you are (!), I love conversations.

This fascination with the trend in decreasing levels of conversation is the focus of this piece in the Atlantic:

Turkle is at work on a new book, aspirationally titled Reclaiming Conversation, which will be a continuation of her thinking in Alone Together. In it, she will out herself again, this time as “a partisan of conversation.” Her research for the book has involved hours upon hours of talking with people about conversation as well as eavesdropping on conversations: the kind of low-grade spying that in academia is known as “ethnography,” that in journalism is known as “reporting,” and that everywhere else is known as “paying attention.”
“I can’t, in restaurants, not watch families not talking to each other,” Turkle tells me. “In parks, I can’t not watch mothers not talking to their children. In streets, I can’t not watch mothers texting while they’re pushing their children.”
Her methods are contagious; once you start noticing what Turkle notices, you can’t stop. It’s a beautiful day, and we walk past boutiques, restaurants, and packed sidewalk cafés. The data are everywhere: The pair of high-school-age girls walking down Boylston Street, silent, typing. The table of brunchers ignoring their mimosas (and one another) in favor of their screens. The kid in the stroller playing with an iPad. The sea of humans who are, on this sparkling Saturday, living up to Turkle’s lament—they seem to be, indeed, alone together.

We are chatting, messaging, updating the Facebook status, tweeting, yes. But, ...

The conclusion she’s arrived at while researching her new book is not, technically, that we’re not talking to each other. We’re talking all the time, in person as well as in texts, in e-mails, over the phone, on Facebook and Twitter. The world is more talkative now, in many ways, than it’s ever been. The problem, Turkle argues, is that all of this talk can come at the expense of conversation. We’re talking at each other rather than with each other.

When I teach a class online, it is that conversation with students in the classroom that I miss.  The dialog in the classroom, the tangential comments made, the jokes, and even the wide yawns of students, make up the valuable Socratic conversation.

Conversations, as they tend to play out in person, are messy—full of pauses and interruptions and topic changes and assorted awkwardness. But the messiness is what allows for true exchange. It gives participants the time—and, just as important, the permission—to think and react and glean insights. “You can’t always tell, in a conversation, when the interesting bit is going to come,” Turkle says. “It’s like dancing: slow, slow, quick-quick, slow. You know? It seems boring, but all of a sudden there’s something, and whoa.”
Occasional dullness, in other words, is to be not only expected, but celebrated. Some of the best parts of conversation are, as Turkle puts it, “the boring bits.” 

Oh well. Maybe some day when there is a severe electromagnetic storm and we lose electronic communication, we might be forced into re-learning the art of conversation.  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem likely that we can teach the art of conversation either!

"You're cutting edge!" ... A student's compliments make my day :)

A student, "K," emails me:

You're cutting edge! Found an article about a university that gives grants to profs to make their own work available for courses so students don't have to pay an arm and a leg for text books! Interesting concept, just thought I would let you know again how much I (We, if I can speak for the college student in general) appreciate the fact that you let us learn in an economically friendly way!

Very, very rarely anymore do I use books for the courses I teach.  Instead, I make use of academic journal articles that are accessible electronically through the university's library, and an array of freely available online readings, and audio and video materials.

Not only because it is wallet-friendly for students, but also--and more importantly--because using books is so much old-style, and using textbooks is nearly primitive, for the kinds of courses I teach.

But, doing what I do is hard work because I need to be constantly on the lookout for materials that I can use in my courses.  After all, it is so much easier to merely use a textbook or two.

In addition to that kind of work, I have to deal with reactionaries--the faculty, in particular.

Five years ago, the then president of the faculty union here led an effort against online course offerings.  Yes, against.

In my reply (November 11, 2006!) I wrote in support of offering more and more online courses, and went beyond that issue alone:

I would argue that course materials belong in the intellectual commons, and not behind walls that prevent access. 

Over the past few years, I have been impressed with two important approaches in particular:

1. The idea of "Creative Commons" that Lawrence Lessig champions. 

2. MIT's venture into "opencourseware".

I am not sure if it was Lessig who started Creative Commons, but it was from one of his talks a few years ago that I became aware of it.  (More info at http://creativecommons.org/) 

This approach appeals to me because I think the more we make ideas available for everybody, the more humans progress.  I don't think that all our progress has come out of material incentives alone, which is what complex intellectual property rights regimens attempt to do.

A similar, and in fact related, venture is MIT's OpenCourseWare.  (More info at http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html)

When it was launched I remember thinking, hey, this is why the Web is fantastic: we can easily makes things available for free and easy access to people wherever they might be.  This is all the more the case when it comes to distributing knowledge to people in resource-constrained countries, which are quite a few in this world.

MIT's approach has catalyzed the development of the "Opencourseware Consortium".  (More info at http://www.ocwconsortium.org/) It has now become a world-wide effort to pool together the academic knowledge.   

... 

I also hope that the union would urge the OUS campuses to join the OpenCourseware Consortium, if a campus is already not a member.

In sending that kind of a reply, I was consistent with what I always tell students: provide evidence for your arguments, and don't simply try to dazzle me with rhetoric.  

The reply from the faculty union president was nothing but hot rhetoric; a tragic irony, given that he is a philosophy professor :)

The union isn't against online courses, or intellectual commons, but you are proceeding from a false assumption.  The material posted for online courses is not part of some intellectual commons - it is owned by the University.  They charge students money for access to it.  Under the current system, if they so desired, they could get you to do an online course once, then hire an adjunct to teach your material ad infinitum and never give you the chance to teach it again.  They could forgo adding full-time tenure-track positions to your department (in fact, they do that already!), and teach classes on the cheap using your materials and perpetual adjuncts.  They could even reduce the number of tenure-track faculty, replacing them with adjuncts.  Colleges and Universities all over the country are in fact doing this.  We want the University to add full-time tenure-track faculty (with Ph.D.s) to meet student demand, and they don't want to do it because better qualified people cost more per class.

 

This isn't about intellectual commons - it is about universities being able to exploit faculty, especially adjuncts, and about ensuring the highest quality of instruction. 

Seriously, did he not see a major flaw in his own argument?  If the worry is about the university packaging up a course content and having an adjunct teach it ad infinitum, and eliminate the need for full-time faculty, then couldn't the university simply make use of the wide range of course materials, including syllabi, from  prestigious universities like MIT, which provide the same materials for free through the OperCourseWare project, instead of commissioning me to develop them? 

The net result: students, like the one who emailed me, are severely shortchanged by faculty who believe that higher education is only about them, instead of focusing on the only thing that really matters: student learning.

I suppose all I need is an email or two from students, and that is enough to make a Don Quixote out of me tilting at the academic windmills :)

Thank you, "K."

ps: the news item that "K" came across, which prompted her to email me?  This one:

the University of Massachusetts at Amherst recently launched the Open Education Initiative, which will award grants to faculty members seeking to develop low- or no-cost course materials as an alternative to traditional textbooks.

Hmmm .... I didn't even get a grant to do what I have been doing for years :)

The news item also adds this:

Librarian Marilyn Billings says the project will eventually aim to make open education resources “accessible to anyone, anywhere.” 

I wonder whether the faculty union leaders read such materials at all!

Or, perhaps those "leaders" serve as classic examples of Kahneman's "illusion of validity"

Online learning is a problem? Really? News to me!!!

The president of the university where I am employed notes in his end-of-the-year email:

many of our students spend a good part of their lives in a “cyber world” subculture. They find their news, music and other forms of connections with others in this cyberspace rather than three dimensional space. For some students, online reference sources similar to Wikipedia are thought to be an authoritative reference for factual information about science, history, art and culture. Books, newspapers and other reference materials are then less read, if read at all.  Because cyberspace information sources often blur the distinction between truth and opinion, we as educators are often unaware of how differently students see the world of fact and opinion and truth and falsity. It is fair to say that since many of us as teachers are not a part of the student cyber culture, we are often unable to counter the misinformation and lack of critical introspection so prevalent in cyberspace.  Since clearly seeing the problem is necessary to finding a reasonable solution, many here on the faculty and staff are engaged in becoming more involved in the cyber world in order to be better teachers. Cyberspace information allows students to access incredible amounts of information without a credible means of ascertaining its veracity. In effect, students may become “private learners” in cyberspace without the kind of corrective public discourse so necessary to a university education. This is one of the downsides of teaching in the “information age”. We will continue to work on the problem.

(emphasis is mine.)

But ...

• This is by no means any downside at all.  The phenomenal growth in this information age has liberated teaching and learning from the narrow and confining walls of the classrooms. Even from libraries, dusty or new.  No more is the supposed "sage" at the center of the stage.
• Students as "private learners" is not the problem.  It is a problem that academe has not figured out how to empower that mode.  However, that day of reckoning is not that much far away, as experiments like OCW, UnCollege, Peer-to-peer U., etc, force the status-quo maintaining old guards to change ...
• Am reminded of Bill Gates' comment: 

  'Place-based colleges' are good for parties, but are becoming less crucial for learning thanks to the Internet

• Why is this cyber-based learning considered a problem?  This is no problem.  The problem is the same one as in the previous ages as well: are the students learning, and benefiting from the classes?  The fact that we don't talk about this, or very minimally in terms of filling out appropriate forms and preparing bureaucratic reports, is the real problem we need to tackle.
• The fact that many faculty are clueless about the rapidly exploding cyber-media, and refuse to go anywhere near it is even more a problem.  Of course, having tenure means that they can continue to engage in their classroom activities the same way they did even Before Internet! 
• And, don't even get me started on the truth-versus-opinion issue.  I know quite a few faculty colleagues who take nothing but opinions to their classrooms.  Truth(s) be damned, I suppose!

And, thus begins another summer :)

Universities as ponzi schemes

An earlier post on Andrew Hacker's Higher Education? included details on the humor controversies it generated on campus.  Well, it is truly humorous when Stephen Colbert chats with Hacker :)

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Stephen Colbert University - Andrew Hacker
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

The end of colleges round the corner, says Bill Gates

For quite a while, I even maintained a separate blog that was about online teaching and learning--because I was./am confident that it is only a matter of time before technology completely overthrows the teaching and learning that is severely constrained by time and space.  Even in that blog, I have referred to Bill Gates' remarks.  In the YouTube clip here, via the Chronicle, Gates says:

'Place-based colleges' are good for parties, but are becoming less crucial for learning thanks to the Internet

Econ prof teaches online while serving in Iraq. Awesome!

When Cheryl J. Wachenheim, an associate professor of agribusiness and applied economics at North Dakota State University, says she taught her courses last year from a remote location, she means a desert nearly 7,000 miles away from her Fargo campus.
A captain in the Minnesota Army National Guard, Ms. Wachenheim deployed to Balad, Iraq, just north of Baghdad, in August 2008, for a 10-and-a-half-month stay. She continued teaching courses in micro- and macroeconomics online, from a fortified trailer crammed with medical supplies, body armor, the M-16 rifle she was required to carry wherever she went, and a computer.

How cool is that, eh!  The entire article in the Chronicle is a must read.  

But, I don't understand this part:

To get Internet access, she and nine other soldiers on her base in Iraq chipped in for a satellite dish and dug holes in the sand all over the base so they could run wires underground and into each of their trailers.

They had to pay for internet access?  WTF!

My sincere salute to her:

She worked out of Joint Base Balad, one of the largest American military bases in Iraq, dubbed "Mortaritaville" because of its location in the line of fire. Ms. Wachenheim says that when she walked around the base after hours, C-RAM (counter rocket, artillery, and mortar) weapons would light up the night sky.
In that kind of environment, running her classes was more like rest and recreation than work, Ms. Wachenheim says. Without the teaching duties, she would have felt like an economist at loose ends.
"Some people like to read on the base, some like to watch movies," she said in a telephone interview from Fargo, where she returned to teach this semester. "I like to interact with students. People in the unit didn't want to discuss the idiosyncrasies of the economy. This gave me that outlet."

Hey, thanks Professor Wachenheim.

Why economists and academics run into PR trouble!

Couldn't the economics professor have figured out a better way to convey the point instead of saying:

"With the exception of—possible exception of—prostitution, I don't know any other profession that's had no productivity advance in 2,500 years," he says.

And guess where he brings in this contrast? In the context of discussing online education!
Of course, my immediate thought was that through online prostitution gets the biggest bang for the buck; isn't that productivity? ha ha