High Percentages

This semester, I seem to have more students producing "excellence" than I remember in any other semester. Am I just seeing differently since I've returned from sabbatical?

For example, some of my online tech writers have produced Instructions that are of almost-professional quality: our college's IT folks could learn a thing or two from these students.

And another example: The narrative arguments (first graded assignment) from One Section of my FYComp students have charmed me: as I read, I kept thinking, "We have to collect these in a book! These folks have great stories to tell!"

I read about a fellow who ended up working in a florist shop while out of jail on work release: now he's a horticulture major at our college. Another woman wrestled with giving up coffee for her health, and now she's seeing more results than she anticipated. Another student vividly described a car trip back from the cabin, ramping up the emotional pitch toward the car flipping in front of her. A young father celebrated his 2-year-old son; an older father celebrated his 19-year-old son.

One Section pays attention, does their homework, listens, offers thoughtful feedback to each other during workshop, asks serious questions. That behavior is reflected in their good writing.

However:

The "other" section, not so much. But the "other" section is full of high school students (current and very very recent) who stare blankly at me a lot, text message during class, don't do their homework, don't listen, complain. A high percentage of their narrative arguments aren't: a weirdly large number of them contain research and (wrong) in-text citations, talk about social issues (obesity epidemics, drinking age, pet neutering) which could've been linked to a personal narrative but weren't at all.

What conclusion would you draw from the "other" section's first assignments? That they'd been written for another purpose in another setting? That seems reasonable, huh? I've had that conversation with a couple of the worst offenders, writers of essays that are so-far-off the mark. One of those students has already gone to the dean, saying I "accused" her/him of "cheating." Oy.

Especially "oy" since I was really careful to say that I was coming to this conclusion based on what s/he produced: I couldn't come up with any other reasonable explanation since we'd spent a couple of weeks in class 1) looking at example narrative arguments, 2) talking about the chapter that explains what they are, 3) brainstorming and drafting in class. I said that I was alerting her/him early in the semester because I wanted to keep the lines of communication open. S/he thanked me after we talked, then apparently went right down to the dean.

The dean thinks maybe a learning disability? I think it's an veracity disability.

Common Book Blog

One of my colleagues asked for input about how we faculty are using the college's Common Book. He's presenting about it at next month's TYCA conference in Duluth, Oct. 2-4.

I'm having a good experience, so far, with my students' engagement. Here's the message I sent my colleague:

Hi, Larry.

I'm having some interesting success with the Common Book this semester, my first time working with a common book since I was gone last year. I decided to think about about the book for my writing courses (Engl 1021 and 1025) as a common topic for class discussions. The place/space for these discussions is cyberspace.

For both courses, I've set up blog (with Blogger) where students are discussing the book. In my totally online Engl 1025, technical writing class, I think of it as a way for them to "talk" with each other even though they don't see each other in class. The blog space is a kind of classroom space: it's secure because I've set it up so only "invited authors" can read/write to it (I invited the students via their college email accounts). For my face-to-face Engl 1021 courses (I have two sections), I've set up ONE blog where students from these two different classes are talking to each other.

If you want, I can add you as a "reader" for the blog so you can see some of the thoughtful things they're saying, stuff like today's Engl 1025 student's post about chapter 3: the student wrote, "According to the last part of the chapter [three], I cannot understand why American negotiators rejected the policy documents because we all share the same planet, the existing of people is much more important than obligation of a country. One over all conclusion about this chapter: It is great."

Cool, huh?
Julie
_________________________________________________________
Julie K. Daniels
English Department
Women and Gender Studies Program
Century College

"Please stop confusing me!"

I've spent the last three hours of this afternoon teaching in my online technical writing course: a big assignment is due Monday at 11:59 p.m., so the usual hectic flurry of draft swapping, instructor paging, and discussion posting is happening.

This post's title is a quote from one of those students: s/he wrote it this afternoon in the Subject line of a public posting to the course website, under the "Q&A About Quizzes and Exams" section. This student has not been scoring well on the quizzes.

Now, these quizzes are completely open-book. Students can take them twice with no penalty: the highest score counts. The only constraint is that students only get 15 minutes each time to take the 10-point quizzes. Correct answers are not provided between attempts -- and I haven't been able to figure out how to provide them after the second attempt (our college's D2L CMS is woefully difficult to work).

To my mind, it's almost impossible not to get 100% on such a quiz when 1) you have all the questions after you take the quiz once and 2) you can use your textbooks. My idea in creating the quizzes this way is to get students to read the material so that they will do well with the *real* assignments for the course, which are the writing assignments. I have even given a small talk to colleagues about this quizzing philosophy/practice, calling it "Quiz to Learn," opposing it to Quiz to Test.

Anyway, this unhappy student posted the following (yes, this big block of text is exactly how it appeared):

"After reading our sections the quiz was on 3 times, i still got 6 out of ten. I Felt completely sure that two of those were correct. You become too repetitive in some instances and give us too many options. I do appreciate being given more than one chance. But how are we supposed to learn what the right answer is if it does not tell us. Would you not rather have your students get them all right, and know that they have in fact at some point learned what is correct and what is not correct. I cant say from experience, but i would prefer my students know the right answer, and possibly make the quizzes less confusing, or give less answers to certain questions, in hopes of them actually learning the material correctly. I have never taken a mutliple choice test that offers so many answers to one questionthat all sound so much alike. Especially when given a time constraint it puts us under pressure. I just want to know the correct and proper way to do things, and hopefully still get an A or B in this course. I hope the next quiz is not so confusing. Probably more so if you are giving us 3 chances! Not trying to be ude or judge your teaching styles. I just wanted to state my take on the situation. Thanks for reading. Is it not our job as students to question things?"

Don't you love the last line, with its archaic syntactic inversion to begin the question? :-) Such a wonderful rhetorical tactic.

SO Slow

The last few days, the CMS (Desire 2 Learn or D2L for short) for our online courses has been TERRIBLY slow at loading.

I'm teaching an online tech writing course, which requires almost daily input from students, and we get timed out on some of our posts. I've begun copying ALL of the messages I post (these posts are my teaching, after all!) because often when I go to "Post" on the Discussion Board, the entire system locks up.

The other challenge will be this weekend: students have their second major assignment due Monday at 11:59 p.m., which means I'll have tons of last-minute questions on Sunday. That'll be fun, to download drafts, read and comment, then upload when the system's excruciatingly slow.

Anyone else having a problem like this? It's happening both on my home computer (I have wifi) and my office computer.

Freewriting Discoveries

The first essay's due in a week, and students were supposed to read two chapters that (1) provided techniques for finding topics and (2) explained the features of the first essay.

Logical class-start activity: freewriting about possible topics for the first essay since freewriting was one of the techniques discussed in (1). How did this activity turn out, you ask?

Freewriting often leads us to what we didn't know we thought, often reveals more than we had in our brains. Freewriting can cause unveiling and revealing.

For example, fully a quarter of the students wrote that they had not read the chapters. Another quarter revealed as much by exploring topics wholly unsuited to what was explained in (2). Another quarter started excellent drafts, coming to some bright insights and fascinating possibilities. The final quarter couldn't do the assignment: one even wrote "I don't know what to write" over and over, almost 200 times in 15 minutes, after writing, "I'm not creative. Even my psychiatrist says I'm not creative."

Now I know too much.

Students are Blogging

It's great: students are talking with each other on our class blogs. I've found out that our Century Soccer team won this weekend in Wisconsin. I've also found out that the Common Book is resonating with my students.

This innovation might be a good idea.

Proofreading Matters

From CAC.OPHONY: Conversations in Communication Across the Curriculum via Talking Points Memo: Click on the image to see the error better.

A Clean Desk

There's really something to be said about leaving the office for the weekend with a cleaned desk. I have never, ever managed to do so before. But for some reason this year, I've done it twice now. Feels very satisfying.

I finished grading the first batch of assignments from my online tech writers: for the first time *ever* in my teaching career, a student earned a perfect score for her first assignment. Stupendous. I also had a bunch that earned 90% of the points -- also great. Only three of 23 who failed (one with a zero, even though he turned the assignment in!), so this semester is feeling pretty good. So far. :-)

My Comp 1 classes are very different from each other, despite the fact that they're both afternoon classes and both have full enrollment: the MW class is full of high school kids who text during class, fool around with each other becuase they know each other. I have to be a mom in that class, which I hate.

The TTh class has working adults, older and more disciplined, who do their work diligently and with humor. It's a fun group -- more diverse, too: a fellow from Palestine who already has a BA, a couple of Somali students, four or five Hmong students, a woman from India or Pakistan, another from Laos. It's just so cool when Nirmala and Mustafa collaborate on a piece of writing, or Blia and Jehad. What a great country we live in.

When you know too much

So during the fire alarm this afternoon, I sat with a former student who's finishing a law enforcement degree at the college. She's funny, has a complicated life, and likes to talk to me about a wide range of topics.

She told me about her online course this summer, American Government, where she didn't learn a single thing. How can that be? I asked. Because the course consisted of reading and taking a weekly quiz. That's it. No interaction with other students. No feedback or conversation or discussion with the professor. She spent nearly $500.00 for this "course."

What do I do with this information? I'm breaking my neck with my online course: was in the office until 10:40 tonight uploading my first batch of graded assignments: 23 students, two or three files each to upload, minimum five minutes per student -- you do the math. These numbers don't even count the time it takes to download their written work, read it, comment on it, save it with a different file name so I can distinguish it from the ungraded work.

These numbers also do not count the time spent reading discussion postings (from the whole class and in the small groups I've set up so students can peer review each others' work), making discussion postings, writing News items, commenting on the class blog, answering questions, etc. To me, a college course means students have interaction with an instructor and with material. Is that old-fashioned?

Our union thinks that all online courses are the same. They're not. And somehow something must be done. But what?

So much writing!

Why do I ask for so much of it? Then I have to read it. Do I think students won't write unless they think I'm reading it?

So much depends upon the first few class meetings: expectations set, attention focused, energy rewarded. I have to have some kind of "follow through" so that students do their homework as well as their classwork.

The thing is: all writing is good. All writing helps students become better writers. Even the goofy writing like they're doing on our class blog. Silly!

It makes such a difference

I teach both required courses and elective courses. Last night was one of the electives, Intro to GLBT Studies. Students who take this course are actually interested in the topic unlike the students who take my other courses, Composition 1 or Tech Writing. Those students are compelled to take these because the courses are required for their degrees.

Last night, students engaged right away, had things to say, offered answers/solutions/insights to me and to *each other* in a way I infrequently get in my required courses. Last night students felt free to ask questions for which they *really* wanted to know answers:

For example, as we began our course with a discussion of vocabulary and definitions: "My husband's coworker used to be a man and had the surgery and now is a woman. Is she a transsexual or transgender?"

My answer (a paraphrase from memory): "You've brought up a really good issue that has to do with the meanings of words, categories, definitions. Things we think we all know -- like what 'woman' is or means -- aren't really so simple when we're talking about human beings who don't quite fit into our preconceived notions about a binary system. Some folks might call this person a transgender person because she's moved from the gender of 'man' to the gender of 'woman.' Some people might call her 'transsexual' because she's altered her body's sexual parts to be in line with 'woman.' But this person herself might not want either category or label; she might just want to be known as a 'woman,' plain and simple, because she's worked hard to achieve that status!"

I went on to talk more about the premises that undergird our understandings of words, concepts, ideas, and how these premises need to be revealed in order to understand what we're talking about. The mere fact that I brought up the word "premises" made two of my students think that their Logic course would be related to this GLBT course: how great is that! Students making connections across disciplines!

What a good night of conversation and learning with interesting, interested people.

It'll overwhelm me

I've got my students writing, that's for sure, in many spaces and places. Why? It's only the first week, and I already feel behind with responding to them.

I guess the thing to remember is that they learn to write by writing, don't need me to respond to everything they say, will teach each other some important things.

Right?

Good first day

A couple of innovations worked well:

1) With introductions, for years I have asked students to "interview" each other and then introduce that interviewee to the whole class. Typically, I ask a question about the student's course goals/objectives, but I get tired of hearing, "My goal is to get an A in this class." So this year, I asked, "What do you hope to get out of *and give to* this class?"

The second part of the question solicited answers like, "I hope to give time and determination to this class." Yep, much better.

2) For a first-day writing exercise, I handed out a couple of cartoons about writing: next to each cartoon was blank space, and I asked students to think about the cartoons and put something in the space.

I deliberately used the word "put" to see who would write, who would draw, etc. One student drew an excellent extension of the first cartoon, and almost all students wrote something of interest. All were completely absorbed with the assignment. I'll definitely do it again.

Almost

Materials done (enough) for the first day of class for three of my four classes. Whew. Details to follow, of course, especially because I know the online course has glitches.

Now for the Wednesday night course: it's going to get shorted I fear!

Why . . .

. . .can I not see / open any of the documents in my online course? Something has changed since I last used D2L? Something changed with the switch to the upgraded D2L? Overall, I like the upgrade, but I can't understand why every document is blank.

One/Two Down

So I figured out the structure of my Comp 1 courses: it took MUCH longer than it should have. The wonderful/terrible thing about sabbatical is that it's caused me to change/realign/revise the books/assignments/timeline I use in my courses. All my courses!

The tricky thing with Comp 1 is that I have two different kinds of time frames: even though they're each twice-a-week classes (which I prefer because then the course doesn't feel like high school), one meets for 75 minutes twice a week and the other for 110 minutes twice a week.

The 110-minute meetings are easy to fit with my "lecture/discussion plus writing workshop" pedagogy: Tuesdays are whole-class meetings with lecture/discussion about the homework; Thursdays are Writers' Workshops with half the class meeting 4:00-4:50 to "workshop" two writers' drafts, the other half the class meeting for 5:00-5:50 to workshop.

The 75-minute session is harder: workshops will only be 30 minutes long, with some wiggle-room for transitions between groups. And with two writers for each workshop, 15 minutes is really not enough time to fully workshop a draft, so I'll have to be quick about keeping us on track!

This year I've also added a blogging component for the students: the idea is to get them to write, write, write in various forums for various purposes. The blogging won't be "graded" as such; it'll just be counted, sort of how I work with reading journals in non-comp classes.

(Hey, the use of the semicolon above makes me think about this Boston Globe article called "Sex and the Semicolon": interesting! I'm an over-user of colons [and hyphens], so we'll see if anyone writes an article about them.)

Thinking Ahead

Wow, this new school year is going to be action-packed. Today's sessions filled me in on lots of new, cool stuff going on -- I can't say I was exactly "inspired," but I was eager to get in on projects.

One initiative is the Common Book Project, of course, and we're reading Field Notes From a Catastrophe this year. Author Elizabeth Kolbert is even coming to campus on March 10, 2009!

This video, from The New York Times blog "By the Numbers" by Charles M. Blow, will be of use, I think: it's called "Vampire Energy."

We begin

Today's the start of the fall semester: faculty and staff gather for our three-day "in-service" sessions where we learn about the new light bulbs purchased by the college, the special ink used to print the reams-and-reams of marketing materials because we don't have enough students.

My first year at the college, these "duty days" (awfully perfect name almost all faculty persist in calling them) included a wonderful and inspirational talk about teaching: Chet Meyers reminded me why I teach, why I love it, and why it's important to remember these things. We haven't had such a motivating beginning since. *Sigh*.

Georgia on my mind

I've been to Tbilisi, Georgia, about 10 years ago on a research trip with the American International Health Alliance (a branch of USAID that is now defunct, from what I've heard). My research partner and I spent about four days in that city, interviewing doctors and other medical professionals (medical school professors, hospital "chiefs" and technology experts).

During our stay, I remember excellent food and a city that was pleasantly brownish, dusty streets competing with a few dusty trees leafing out to green, not much grass, and a few really stunning old buildings and cemeteries that reflected the long history of a people who'd lived in these mountains. (See some accurate photos here from an interesting blogger.) I remember a proud, intelligent people, professional and knowledgeable about the West, ready to jump into the 21st century.

Our hosts took us Americans on a picnic one afternoon, van-ride through the countryside to a lake surrounded by a thinned forest, no beach but a swimable lake where families were picnicking like us: blanket spread with the familiar flat bread, cheese, sausage, tomatoes, two kinds of pesto/mushroom spread made with wild greens, fruit, wine, coca cola and fanta. Many Georgian folks swam in their undergarments, but not our hosts, some of whom were wearing high heels in the woods. And I was the only American woman to swim, which made me popular with the fellows.

The Georgian people were my favorite of all the folks we met in our three-week, eight-country tour: I said to them that their country would be the only one I'd consider bringing my family to so we could hike to the castle/church/city buildings from the 9th century, eat the famous soup and bread-with-goat-cheese baked into it, shop along the tree-lined market street in Tbilisi. I wonder if I'll get the chance to do so? Maybe I'll make the khachapuri and kharcho myself.

Text Message Abbreviations in Irish

(Click here or above.)

Thanks, Omniglot - The Blog (not to be confused with its parent, Omniglot: Writing Systems & Languages of the World)

What's old is new

I found myself in an online article from the Wall Street Journal called "When Lit-Crit Mattered."

I'm not usually a reader of the WSJ, but this link was provided by "Arts & Letters Daily," a helpful, informative online "service of The Chronicle of Higher Education."

The article reviews the book Praising It New: The Best of the New Criticism, a collection of essays about New Criticism edited by Garrick Davis.

Reading the summary of New Critics' commitments and practices confirmed for me what I've always suspected but didn't quite know: I was trained in New Criticism. I've been a close reader of texts for most of my life, and those skills were honed by literature professors at St. Kate's and Penn State. At the U of M's rhetoric department, close reading became "discourse analysis" as a research method. I was also encouraged to read *everything* using such a method, including non-canonical authors thanks to my professors who practiced if didn't overtly teach feminist and critical theory. So my education didn't suffer from the narrowness-of-canon that New Critics are accused of perpetuating.

Because my grad school experiences were interrupted by child-raising, I missed the intense training in things like the cultural-studies-type of literary theory, structuralism, or deconstruction. Therefore, my classroom activities center around the ways-of-reading I found most effective. I've taught my own students critical reading practices that foreground the text even though students most often want to foreground the authors' lives as a way to understand the text. I've never encouraged that because it seems to take all the power out of an imaginative work, and the human imagination is what we praise in literature, if you ask me, not the life led by the author.

Another book for me to read in my spare time.

As we end

The summer session class meets for the last time tomorrow night. Despite the fact that the syllabus, the calendar, and the class website say our final will be ONLINE, not during the last class meeting, students were surprised last night to find out that the final class meeting would not be an exam.

Just goes to show the power of precedent: the midterm exam was in-class with a short-essay portion that could be taken home and returned online.

The way I set up my courses, students can take either the midterm or the final exam (or take both and the highest score will count). So students who did poorly on the midterm want to take the final; oddly enough, these students are the ones who didn't get that our last class meeting is an *actual class* not the exam.

Just goes to show that the weaker students are weaker in more areas than one: they're not great readers, writers, or planners.

I have one who was going to skip the last class because s/he's working at WE Fest. Another student missed last night and was hoping to miss tomorrow too, in effect taking a 15/16-week literature course in 5 weeks (and using it to substitute for another course at her/his home university where the course would have cost about $2800.00 instead of $450.00).

Hmmm . . . maybe I've got it wrong: maybe these students are very good planners . . . ! At any rate, I've answered four panicked emails today from students who need extensions or something because of their life situations and the grades they've earned this semester. I do wish I could encourage more responsible behavior on the part of students: how do others help students stay current with the course requirements, short of hand-holding and acting like the students' mother? I'm just not interested in that (mis)understanding of so-called "ethic of care" pedagogy.

What does this sentence mean?

Here's the opening sentence from a student's "field trip report," where s/he is supposed to analyze the experience of going to an independent bookstore, Amazon Bookstore Cooperative, and connect it to the course we've been in: Engl 2061 - Women's Literature: British and Colonial:

"There has been a long, withstanding tradition of preserving women through literature."

I have to say that I get images of orange marmalade in my head . . . :-) And what word should the "withstanding" in that sentence be? I can't figure that one out at all.

Just for More Fun

The Onion Radio News has radio podcasts. Here's the "Rules Grammar Change" from yesterday, Aug. 2, 2008. (Warning: the sound is loud!)

Just for Fun

From the techrhet list: sharing a goofy video from College Humor -- it's called Font Conference, but it's really a little super-hero story. Check out the font chosen for the hero -- and the font chosen for the villain -- not to mention the poor victim!

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

In Class Demonstrations

The brief post from yesterday was typed on-the-fly in our classroom as I was doing a bit on technology: the opportunities and limits of web searching/web sources.

Because we were talking about "colonialism," we googled in different ways: the web, blogs, scholar, images, videos (almost all of these new to students, who are used to clicking the first google hit, usually wikipedia, which some consider an unreliable source -- we did change the wikipedia entry for colonialism to say it was the name of my pet golden retriever; in about 90 seconds, we got a message saying that our addition looked "unconstructive.").

To see if the Google blog list would be updated with my own blog's mention of colonialism, I asked students to give me something to say. That's when Mike said, "Colonialism is good."

We never got back to seeing how long it took for our post to show up on Google's blogs list, but it's there now, WAY down the list.

Classroom discussion

Tonight in class we're talking about technology in teaching. One of my students has said, "Colonialism is good." We're trying to find balanced sources on the web.

What to do

I'm curious about what folks do when faced with a academic dishonesty issue, one I've wondered about in the past and now has occurred again today:

I've had students deliberately, knowingly plagiarize, and when I tell them that I will be following the consequences for this act (student earns an F for the course), the students withdraw from the course. That way, a W shows up on their transcripts instead of an F.

What to do, if anything, about this inaccuracy? Oddly enough, I had this situation occur last year with a fellow going into *law enforcement* -- not quite a rule-follower, that fellow.

Pretty good exam

The midterms are almost graded -- one of the students earned 97 of 100 points! I'll look forward to the second half of the "semester" if this good work keeps up.

Which way to approach . . .

. . . Jane Eyre? So many possibilities, so little time.

And I can't even trust that all students have read the novel: they'll come to class to find out what I or others say about it so that they'll know what'll be on the midterm exam. Another summer session quandry.

This YouTube video by Zuxana of Slovakia compares three versions of the famous "falling off his horse" scene, which is the first time Jane Eyre meets Rochester, although she doesn't know it's him. The variety of interpretation might interest my students . . . .

My "pretty okay" class

Teaching in summer is whirl-wind: compress sixteen weeks into six and call it an equivalent? I don't think so, especially when it comes to a literature course where one must read -- really read -- the texts and not just the SparkNotes for the texts. One of my colleagues at the U of M even called a lit course in the compressed summer session "unethical."

Interestingly, the course is full of non-Century students, at least three of whom already have degrees and one of whom is currently a high school teacher getting some continuing ed credits (he's taught for a dozen years, so I'm curious about his take on my style). None of the students is especially bright, although most are perfectly nice. No one stands out as a pleasure to work with -- one or two seem eager but not very skilled or practiced at reading or talking about reading. A couple make LOTS of excuses all the time. A couple never seem to do any of the course reading. But another couple of them may surprise me.

Most of the non-Century folks are from local private colleges, earning their "gen ed" credits where it's cheap. That feels a bit funny because their *experience* is cheap, too: a thin, diminished experience with literature when a college education should include a rich, robust experience with all that literature reveals/teaches/brings/invokes/stimulates.

But I'm a liberal arts gal, one not interested in "consuming" education. I'm out of step with my times, really. But I have to say I'm okay with that.

Good colleagues

This weekend, I worked hard for the college, making good impressions, as did my wonderful faculty colleague Sue Powell from Nursing and my extraordinary student colleague Courtney Kokkler.

Both women hung in there when the other two volunteers didn't show up.  Both women spoke eloquently and informatively about the college's programs.  

Our booth's visitors picked up all of the admissions information and fun stuff I brought -- as well as almost 350 pens printed with the Q&S at Century student club logo.  "The best pens at the Park," I shilled, telling the truth.

I spent over $10.00 just on Smarties candy this year, over 500 pieces. "We're a college; have a smartie" I said on Saturday.  "We're a college; have a smartie, be a smarty" I said on Sunday, thanks to the talented Jeanne Cornish from Metro State.

Getting ready to get back

The first task of my return after sabbatical happens before my official return.  This weekend I will again, for the fourth year, staff the Century table at Twin Cities Pride, one of the largest GLBTQ festivals in the nation.  Check out this documentary video!  

I do so in my capacity as faculty advisor to the student club, Q & S at Century.  The advisor who has been taking my place this last year is not interested.  I've managed to find three wonderful faculty volunteers and two student volunteers.  I'll be working most of the weekend myself, I think.

For the last four years, the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Diversity and Multicultural Division has reserved six or eight tables for MnSCU institutions.  Century's been a regular, along with Metro State, MCTC, Bemidji, and Moorhead.  I've also seen Anoka-Ramsey, Inver Hills, and Dakota County send folks.  

All of these institutions send their Admissions staff people, the folks whose job it is to attend community festivals and events in order to promote the college and encourage new students to attend.  Our Admissions office does not.  The director believes, rightly, that the staff cannot be everywhere at once and must select which events to attend.  But the rationale is odd:  "Admissions [staff members] attend events which will have the best yield potential for Century College in terms of application and enrollment numbers."  

My question: how can an event that attracts almost 425,000 people, most of them under 40, not be the "best yield potential"?  

Berks Conference

I attended the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians yesterday at the U of Minnesota. Huge attendance! The session I attended, "Before and After Sexuality: Rethinking Continuity and Change in Lesbian History," helped me think more fully about a course I'll be teaching this fall, WGST 1071: Introduction to GLBT Studies. The course is interdisciplinary, but I'm not a historian or a social scientist, so I've come at the course as a literature person who's learning on her own about the issues/approaches/questions in the other disciplines.

I've taught the course three times already, and I do try to establish with students that GLBT Studies looks at history, but it also examines definitions: what GLBT means and to whom and who gets to decide what the categories entail. This session helped me think through the entire problem of categories, the problem of asserting a historical identity, such as "lesbian," when those identities didn't exist (although behaviors may have existed that are the same as current behaviors that determine identities).

The session helps me with something I've been trying to emphasize with students: that GLBT people -- or people who now fit under the current handy rubric of GLBT -- have always existed all over the world: GLBT Studies is the study of such people in order to learn more about human beings as a whole.

Not-so-Good book, Good book

Narrative voice always charms me: in the beginning of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, the narrator beguiles with simple exposition, seemingly profound in his observations because of their easy clarity. But the novel doesn't ascend from that point; instead, the story slows to a watery ending, thin as broth. Disappointing, but it's just a first novel by Dinaw Mengestu.

On the other hand, The Yiddish Policemen's Union charms AND sustains that charm with its thick stew of dialect-smeared complexity. An entire layered world created out of whole cloth, it's a testament to the mature imagination of its author, Michael Chabon.

A New Resource

I was online ordering an examination copy of Graff and Birkenstein's They Say/I Say, and on the Norton Website I found a GREAT companion site: Norton/Write. The exercises are especially good and include immediate feedback/scoring.

Give some of them a try!

A Bit of Bragging

I simply must post this email message I received last week from a colleague: makes my day -- no, my semester!

Julie
Just thought I'd pass along a positive comment from a student in your Lit 342 [American Literature] course. He's an Individualized BA student that I've had in PRSP 301 and PRSP 499 (and was my advisee). He's very technically focused and in the military. He was really lacking the "liberal arts" component of his BA and I encouraged him to take Lit 342 to expand his horizons.

He just emailed me to thank me for recommending this "great course with a great instructor." It's clear that you opened his mind to literature when he was very reluctant to expand his perspectives in that direction. It makes me happy to work with colleagues who are genuinely expanding our student's minds. I appreciate your efforts.

Out of Touch

I've been traveling for 10 days -- to Philadelphia and Lancaster, PA, visiting a friend who's a professor at Franklin & Marshall. Ah, the life of a small, liberal arts college in the Amish hills of eastern Pennsylvania.

This idyllic setting seems to be the assumption many people have about where a college education should happen: brick buildings, ivy, intellectual conversations under tree-leaf canopies (remember Plato's plane tree in the Phaedrus? F&M does indeed have sycamores, our name for the plane).

When I returned from my travels, my son asked if I'd read an article called "In the Basement of the Ivory Tower" in this month's The Atlantic magazine, an article that bemoans the state of higher education. Of course, I realize that this bemoaning is nothing new: every professor remembers the past rosily; every new generation of students is dumber than the last; every social force conspires to erode the idyllic intellectual investigation that's supposed to happen in college.

Coincidentally, this article is being discussed in one of my online lists, where many folks take issue with this Professor X's attitude and approach to his/her students. Others decry the institutional pressures that make such attitudes/approaches necessary. Still others recognize the hazy-memory assumptions behind what's supposed to happen at an institution of higher education.

What interests me most is something not many folks are talking about on my list: the centrality of writing to the educational project. Professor X notices that his/her students "cannot write a coherent sentence." These students fail as a result -- and this failure happens in their composition course, the one Professor X is supposed to be teaching, the one upon which most other courses rest. Other departments/disciplines depend upon our composition courses to "teach students how to write" so that said students can communicate their learning in a complex way, a more complex way than memorizing facts and filling in bubble-sheets.

So I would posit that writing coherent English prose (what we used to call Standard American English or English for Academic Purposes) is a *necessary condition* for the educational enterprise, not simply a *sufficient condition*.

Yet, sadly, while many educational practitioners are aware of this necessity, they're woefully out of touch with how those writing skills/habits/practices develop or can be developed. They're out of touch with their own working conditions in their own classrooms and institutions. They're out of touch with how they, themselves, developed these skills/habits/practices. They're out of touch with the hard work we rhetoric/composition instructor/scholars do to help remedy the situation.

*P.S.* I've ended on a pretty depressing note, which is NOT where I want to end. I don't want to be the same kind of doom-and-gloom emoter as Professor X or as Alan Charles Kors, who's written "On the Sadness of Higher Education" in The New Criterion.

What's up with the world that we higher education professionals, people with some of the best, most important work on the planet, are getting depressed?

Most days, I think my work is profound, useful, a gift. My students are curious, ready, willing (this to me is the most important emotion) and able. My classrooms are dynamic, friendly, inquiry-based sites for real learning, real knowledge-making, real community. Most days I "love my job" so much that it's not a job: it's my way of life.

"Brilliant!"

This BBC3 video comes via The Garance.
What if Facebook was our real life? What if it already is?

Graduation

Most people wouldn't think that I'm a formal-event-type person, that a graduation ceremony would be something I'd attend. After all, why do we have to get gussied up and parade around with mortarboards to acknowledge what we've earned when *we* know what we've accomplished?

But this ceremony is one that matters, I think, as the concrete manifestation of our educational achievements.

And it's almost always a good celebration, even if ours is held in a hockey arena and feels like it: graduates and faculty down in an almost-pit, family members and friends on wooden bleachers without backs jutting out of concrete numbered steps. Even without regalia (didn't do the paperwork required since I'm just not on campus), I'll attend tonight, sitting on those bleachers, mingling after to shake students' hands. I expect to see some of my favorites -- I've been missing them this sabbatical!

It'll look/be different

Coming back after sabbatical, I will be part of a department that I will only partially recognize. The number of leave-takings surprises me, and I hope everyone who's moving on is going to something good/better.

P.S. Speaking of "different," I found this blog article called "Blogging: Content is King" full of definitions, tips, thought-provoking assertions. Not sure, yet, what I think of it. You can find it on a blog called "one cool site: wordpress blogging tips," which may be a sponsored blog created by the folks at wordpress, I don't know for sure.

Online tools for writing

In the wake of my reading the Pew Internet and American Life study called "Writing, Technology, and Teens" (press release is here; PDF of the whole report is here), I've been thinking about what kind of online tools could help students write. I've learned about a few -- I'm trying to decide if it makes sense to tell students about them.

Dr. Paper: not free and originally developed for high school students, supposedly formats APA style correctly

Paper Calendar: free, will make a schedule for your paper-writing tasks

Late Night Writer: free, will ask questions to take you from topic to thesis to supporting paragraphs to finished (if disjointed) essay

yWriter4: free, writes a novel for/with you

Google Docs: free, create, collaborate, share documents online (I'm thinking of using this for class)

Buzzword: free (for now?), like Google Docs but an Adobe product

More to come, perhaps.

Backlash is Back (Did it ever leave?)

It's been a while since feminists I know have felt compelled to use the word "backlash" to talk about the current dismal and disturbing misogyny all over the place. The term felt too dated - remember Susan Faludi's book?

But now there's a fabulous article by the brilliant Katha Pollitt in The Nation that brings us up short: she calls it "Backlash Spectacular" and itemizes some of the most egregious messages our culture regularly dishes out about the female gender (teaching pole dancing to children? mass consumption of a video game that asks players to have sex with prostitutes and then kill them to earn points?), not to mention a most recent outrage: white supremacist and anti-Equal Rights Amendment activist and lunatic Phyllis Schlafley being awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Washington University. Makes you think a doctorate isn't worth much, isn't really about intellectual capability if it's awarded to someone who thinks that the Virginia Tech massacre can be blamed on the English department.

Now more than ever, feminism needs to be promoted, taught, insisted upon: the kind that Rebecca West called "the radical notion that women are people." One good source for helping us analyze media messages about many things is Media Education Foundation.

Retirement

How can it be that a colleague from MCTC is retiring? I was there when he was hired, Steve Kaufman my office mate and friend, father of Maddy and Chloe who're the same ages as Stefan and Zoe.

Tonight's gathering to honor him with energetic English instructors made me long for the days when I was younger, linked to the boundary-pushing folks who had a campus full of diversity, unlike my own campus where I'm the oddity, extremity, weird one.

Meeting folks I'd heard about for years was another plus: Morgan Grace Willow, Michael Seward stayed until the almost-end. And of course I saw pals Kathleen Devore, KateLynn Hibbard, and Linnea Stenson. Bonding over bourbon makes for "buy in" doesn't it?

But reminiscing is fine, too: remembering the old guard, angry and bitter, gone to make room for the twenty-first century. I'm glad we're in the new millennium.

"Apostrophe to Man"

For some reason, this Edna St. Vincent Millay poem is on my mind.
(This photo is of her gravesite at Steepletop Cemetery in Austerlitz, New York.)

Apostrophe To Man

(on reflecting that the world is ready to go to war again)

Detestable race, continue to expunge yourself, die out.
Breed faster, crowd, encroach, sing hymns, build bombing airplanes;
Make speeches, unveil statues, issue bonds, parade;
Convert again into explosives the bewildered ammonia and the distracted cellulose;
Convert again into putrescent matter drawing flies
The hopeful bodies of the young; exhort,
Pray, pull long faces, be earnest, be all but overcome, be photographed;
Confer, perfect your formulae, commercialize
Bacateria harmful to human tissue,
Put death on the market;
Breed, crowd, encroach, expand, expunge yourself, die out,
Homo called sapiens.


I guess my student Matt is right: I should prepare and teach a seminar on Millay.

Another Good Book

Louise Erdrich's new novel, The Plague of Doves, is getting good reviews. I heard her read from in on Friday at Birch Bark Book's reading space, Lake of the Isles Lutheran Church -- powerful and intriguing.
While waiting for her to sign my book, I watched her gracious greeting of every person: a kind professional.

Not New, Still True

And funny! I've posted this video before: The The Impotence of Proofreading by Taylor Mali.

Facebook Surprise

Today I found out that my brother-in-law, who teaches art at Mercyhurst Prep in Erie, PA, has a Facebook group devoted to him: it's called "I have a shrine to Dr. Borowicz in my closet."

Pretty awesome.

Good Book

Friday night's reading at Birch Bark Books: Nine of the 21 contributers to Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers. The book's edited by a community college colleague and pal, Kate Kysar, who's done a marvelous job bringing together lots of Minnesota writers, many of whom I've met either as acquaintances, teachers, colleagues, or because I've read their work: Jonis Agee, Barrie Jean Borich, Taiyon Coleman, Allison McGhee, Heid Erdrich, Wang Ping, Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, Morgan Grayce Willow.

I love them

That's all I can say about this batch of students: I plain love them. Quintilian would approve: he says good teachers love their students.

Tonight was the last class meeting, turning in reading journals and final essays, having a discussion about what should be on the final exam (I keep telling them my philosophy about exams, that they're opportunities for them to show me what they know -- so I ask for their input about what they'd like to be asked), having a "wrap up" discussion.

The discussion went well, prompted by a listserv debate going on right now about the value of a literature survey course (the kind I teach): one fellow thinks they're a waste of time. I asked the students what they think, which is that a "buffet style" as I like to call it allows them the chance to find folks they really connect to and read further. Plus, as one student said, she now knows the answers to some Jeopardy questions!

This semester, I modified my "closing activity" so that it didn't involve matzo. Instead, we used tickets (everyone took 32, the number of students and me) and wrote their names on the backs. Then I asked them to go around the room and say something to every single person, something they remembered or noted or got from this person. Then exchange tickets. As my Somalian student said, "I didn't understand why we were doing this, then I got it: we're saying goodbye." Yep, and thanks.

Many students complimented each other in a way that was heartfelt, I think, and I got a chance to say something positive to everyone as we departed. Also, students commented positively on the class structure (and me, which was nice to hear). One said his parents were both English professors, and this course was one he learned the most in. Another thanked me for "keeping it light." Another said I was the best reader of his writing he'd ever had in college. Another said she *wanted* to come to class every week because of how it was run. Another claimed to have never thought English was "for me" but now wants to read a book a month.

And then some folks went to Gabe's for food and drink and more discussion of the course texts (Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" and Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and Joyce Carol Oates's "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" all struck nerves). Josh came, too, our guest speaker who made a good impression on a sizable minority of students. The fellow who's off to Iraq in June bought an appetizer platter and wished us all well, hugs and handshakes all around.

What a good bunch.

Cross-College Colleagues

I spent the afternoon yesterday with a couple of tremendous people: Steve Kaufman and Kathleen Devore over at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Kathleen graciously allowed me to sit in on a class -- and even chime in with a story of my own, no matter a bit off-topic -- and observe her teaching, her students, her milieu. I learned about a book I'd never heard of: Contemporary Plays by Women of Color.

These kind of conversations and collaborations are absolutely essential, I think. It's so easy to get caught up with the issues on our own campuses, with our own colleagues, in our own classrooms. A simple visit to another college, to another colleague's classroom opens that trap we'd been "caught up" in.

It's risky, though: most of us don't like the idea of someone else observing our space, our interactions with our students: why is that? The ever-present fear of evaluation? Most of us have been graduate students where evaluation was personal, or so it seemed, and had serious ramifications. Others of us have been observed by deans and supervisors, folks whose job it is to grant us better or worse working conditions. Others of us are just private, I suppose, although a truly private person probably doesn't go into teaching much.

The biggest thing I learned, though, is something I keep learning over and over from my colleagues: that good teaching and learning happens in so many ways, through so many small and serendipitous events/acknowledgments/comments, with so many different kinds of people/artifacts/questions/constraints.

One teacher's plea re. plagiarism

"Plagiarism at Uni: An open letter to students by English teacher Suzanne Linder" by Katherine Allen.

Suzanne Linder teaches English at University Laboratory High School in Urbana, IL. She writes calmly and sensibly to ask students to quit plagiarizing, to think for themselves and create original work. What good ideas.

Be sure, too, to follow the comments thread: more good ideas there, especially about the limits of certain kinds of assignments and the benefit of consistently re-examining our pedagogical practices. Also, click on the audio link to hear Linder explain what prompted her to write the letter.

I received the link to this article from Jennifer Veltsos's message on a wonderful listserv I read, TECHRHET, a space/place I've mentioned before, a place/space for great discussion about technology and teaching composition/rhetoric. It's a list hosted by InterUniversity.org.

Join the discussion. Find colleagues. Educate yourself and others.

Period Trick

I found this trick on Steven Krause's teaching blog (found to the right on my higher ed. blogs), entry for April 8, 2008.


http://view.break.com/232903 - Watch more free videos

Perhaps this lesson will be a "public service" to my colleagues and a reason NOT to specify page-lengths with essays/papers. Word counts might be a better way to let students know how much depth you want them to go into.

What I did . . .

. . . last night so that everyone could contribute something to the discussion when not everyone had read everything:

I asked each student to read aloud from one piece they'd read for class (they'd had some choices about what they could read).

I gave them some time to choose 100-150 words (a paragraph or two, a stanza or two), and then we simply went around the room (in alphabetical order based on their middle names) hearing everyone's voice.

I asked each reader to tell us page numbers so we could follow along, author's name, and selection name. After each read, I asked them to explain why they chose this passage, this author, this selection.

Results? What a fabulous discussion we had, and I heard extended speech for the first time from a couple of very shy students who almost never say more than six or seven words. The whole exercise took about an hour with my 28 students.

One more (unexpected) benefit: Many students chose the same selection (Adrienne Rich's poem "Power" came up more than once, as did Audre Lorde's poem "Power," Joyce Carol Oates's "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" and John Updike's "Trust Me")

This repetition, hearing variously accented student voices, allowed listeners to find/hear different things in each new reading: for example, the Power poems became incredibly powerful when read by a range of readers: middle-aged white male, young African American female, young Asian American female, not-so-young white female.

I will definitely do this activity again.

What to do . . .

. . . in class tonight: too much reading to "cover" adequately because we cancelled last week's class meeting. Students have prepared something for their "facilitation," but I fear it'll consist of "here's research we did" rather than any real facilitation of learning.

And then there's next week's class, the last one, originally scheduled as the final exam. But I think I'm going to make it a required meeting to tie up loose ends, come to some closure, and make the final a take-home exam.

Thoughts?

More Morrison

It's a complete cliche to say that Toni Morrison's novels stun and jolt and amaze the reader -- I mean, she's a Nobel Prize winner -- but it's completely true: the early two, The Bluest Eye and Sula, are teachable (and frequently show up on reading lists, in online paper mill repositories, in Cliff/Sparknotes) because they're more-or-less chronological, focus on young people, and have a clear, if unsatisfactory, ending.

The next two, Song of Solomon which I read in college and Tar Baby which I reread last week, are less . . . what: I wrote "tidy" and realized that's not accurate, then "packaged" which gets at what I mean a little bit (they're not "coming of age" novels in the way the first two are), but ultimately the next two are not as concerned with youth. And I like that: I'm tired of the first two, having read each at least four times so that I can teach them well each semester I teach American Women Writers. But let's see Morrison's progression as an artist.

Then we get to Beloved, the novel that knocked me out for two days after I read it; I was such a wreck emotionally that I'm afraid to read it again, but I suppose it'll impact me differently this time since I don't have young children any more.

To follow Morrison's chronology, Jazz is next, which I just finished this week for the first time. What a perfectly-named novel. And I'm thinking I'd like to teach it in conjunction with Gatsby: same time period, basically; same city (Harlem vs. Long Island); same iconic American story, author, genius. I should have paired them this semester, but I didn't know Jazz. Next time.

Next is Paradise, which I'm currently rereading having forgotten I'd read it, a lovely set of chapters like beads on a chain but brutally broken. Brutally. Then I see her next novel is called Love, and then this year's A Mercy. If these titles are any indication, we can expect more intense emotionality. Pathos in spades.

Listen to her read - and to her friend the poet Reynolds Price - at Duke University. I heard her speak once at the U of Minnesota, in Northrup Auditorium. She wasn't sweet, was strong and brave and irritating. She made us uncomfortable and energized. We need these voices.

Media/Genre

I've been thinking about the difference between media and genre ever since Friday, when Geoff Sirc mentioned the distinction at a workshop I attended. He was making a point about digital literacy, that digital writing may be a different genre of writing altogether, not simply writing with new media.

I'm going to have to think about this distinction, one Satrapi mentioned last week, too, when she insisted on being known as a cartoonist, someone who creates comics, not a graphic novelists: her medium is ink, and her genre is comics.

What's the relationship between genre, media, and then the electronic interface with with we readers/consumers engage with words/images/ideas/others? These things all blur/blend/bleed more quickly and widely now that the speed-and-reach of the Internet is here. (How can anyone even articulate anything without the virgule these days?)

Marjane Satrapi

Last night, heard Marjane Satrapi at Century: what a treat.

She's such a wonder, such a good speaker for our campus: intelligent and funny, worldly yet approachable, creative and opinionated. She sat and talked to us, a ready-made "speech" delivered extemporaneously with grace and good humor, genuine thanks.

Here's a trailer from her movie Persepolis made from her two books:

Day 6-of-5

Disaster struck.

Disaster stuck.

I'm both mad and sad.

Institutional processes can be, and in this case have been, rigid and unhelpful; they can, and in this case did, disallow the human contact and truthfulness that makes for good human relations and good decisions. I feel as though my hard work has been for naught: not a good feeling.

Writing takes time

We writing teachers know that writing takes time, but others don't seem to think so: in fact, they think that if we're English teachers, we must be "good at writing," which often becomes synonymous with "fast at writing." But neither is automatically true: I think I'm best at editing, actually, an activity I've spent most of the afternoon and evening doing.

The Board of Trustees Educator of Excellence Awards event is scheduled for April 16. For that fete, lots of stuff is planned: a short video, speeches, lots of handshaking and congratulations -- and a booklet/brochure with bios and photos and other praise-worthy stuff that must be written by someone (right now, my pal Ray, and I've been helping him edit). I'm also supposed to write a short paragraph about what the award means for faculty, especially since I've been on the selection committee and seen a range of excellence, which is true. But what do I write? How do I start?

It's been easier - although time-consuming - to edit Ray's work than start my own. Starting my own writing has been postponed for two other "very good" reasons: because it's easier to edit the docs from our English search committee that'll go to our college president. And it's easier to edit the proposal (and send at least six emails justifying) for the MnSCU women's studies discipline workshop. And it's easier to read Toni Morrison's Jazz.

So guess what I still have left to do before I sleep?

Day 5-of-5

We're done! We came to consensus easily - as PhiloFact said in her comment on Day 4-of-5, when you find the one (or in our case, the ones), you know it. I'm happy that the collective knew, too. What *great* colleagues we have and will have.

Bierstube time - hurrah.

The Student List

Inspired by Timna's "my steady 12," I want to list my Thursday evening wonders, but I have 31, too many to describe individually: Alaina, Angele, Cathy, Chris D, Chris G, Chuck, Cynthia, Dan, Darren, Julia, Karen, Katie, Katrina, Kristi, Laticia, Louis, Margaret, Matt C, Matt W, Michelle, Omeca, Peter L, Pete S, Rachel F, Rachel L, Rosanna, Said, Sara, Tiffany, Tina, Travis.

But there are patterns:

--the English majors who read with intelligent relish, finding authentic ways to describe and analyze texts (Tr, Da, An, Ju, RaF, Lo)
--the English majors who skim for plot details and simple metaphors, tossing out random soundbites (Ti, MaW)
--the English majors who silently nod, offering passionate, accurate analysis only in small groups (Ti, Ka, MaC)
--the full-time workers who arrive after 10-hour days, still ready to wrestle with ideas (Ka, Cy)
--the quiet sideways glancers, who often surprise me with their contributions (Ma, PeL, Kr, Ca)
--the bombasts, not afraid to look silly, often succeeding (ChD, ChG, PeS)
--the dependents, offering as their own snippets culled from the web (Sa, Ro)
--the blanks, unwilling or unable to share anything they're thinking, if they indeed are (Al, Mi)
--the steadies, not bright but not unaware (Ka, RaL, Sa, Ch, Om)
--the oblivious talkers, willing to share even if no one cares to hear (Da, La)

My favorites because they offer thought-filled, beautifully messy views: Angele, Cynthia, Darren, (sometimes) Julia, Louis, Matt C, Rachel F, Travis.

Day 4-of-5

Three unknowns this time: at least to me. I don't think I've ever been as shocked about an interview as I was today. Not just a lack of preparation (it seemed), but also a lack of awareness of what it is we do at the community college, who we teach, why we exist. Not that I have all the answers to these things, but community colleges are uniquely positioned. We're not universities yet we must provide something like it to our transfer students. We're not trade schools yet we must honor the need for work that many students bring. We must be flexible and fair, intellectually grounded and increasingly agile. We need faculty members who are, too.

Day 3-of-5

First time I've listened to someone I want to have as a colleague for the rest of my time at this college. It was lovely to hear passion, authenticity, intelligence. Inspiring.

My input

We were asked to offer our experiences with the technology conversion our college just went through, specifically experience with classroom problems. Even though I'm not teaching, I sent the following response. It'll be interesting to hear if my sentiments get sent on; they're rather incendiary:

"Thanks for this opportunity to offer input about the IT debacle: although I'm not teaching this semester, I'm on a search committee, and the conversion caused major problems for anyone trying to do work for the college. For example, I could not access my email from off campus until I called the Help Desk (they were friendly); I could not access my files from off campus (still cannot - despite following the instructions). Both of these things are/were needed for me to do my job.

"In my opinion, the extremely huge number of problems resulting from this conversion should result in the FIRING of the people in charge. I'm serious. Many of the "problems" that resulted should have been anticipated; that's the job of an IT team, to anticipate and then prepare so that problems of the magnitude we've experienced do NOT happen.

"I'm very, very serious in my opinion here: this rollout was mishandled in a way that points to utter incompetence, utter disregard for the college community and how it does its work, utter disrespect, really. And now the college community is being lied to about the conversion and its aftermath. We've been lied to before about what's possible/impossible with our technology (at least when compared with what's possible/impossible on other two-year campuses), but the magnitude of this particular event astounds me.

"Please convey my sentiments to anyone who is in a position to do anything. The more pressure the faculty puts on administration, the better, I think. We're not luddites and not resistant. We're professionals who need our colleagues in non-faculty positions to be equally professional.

"Thanks,
Julie"

Some people have said that every IT department works at odds with the rest of the institution, but it's not true: conflict, lack of awareness, and outright falsehood do not have to be the MO. We'll see.

At the Delegate Assembly

Little things go a long way: just spending 10 minutes to listen by one bargaining team member can be completely wiped out by a three-second "you haven't been listening to me and I'm done talking about it" from another with more power.

I'm disappointed - again.

Day 2-of-5

Didn't post right away - should have. Odd day for day two, all inside candidates, all over the map: the confident professional who spoke so fast she blistered me. The perennial candidate who didn't seem to have prepared at all, sometimes staring off into space instead of answering. The newbie who oozed sweetness and light, innocence and energy, making my teeth hurt. They're all assets to our department - in different ways and in different doses.

We committee members are getting used to each other, joking around and eating Girl Scout cookies, sharing events from our vacations, our frustrations with the IT department. This kind of work is a way to bond with colleagues - necessary work and good.

What's cheating?

An interesting article on Slashdot makes me ask the question. The article's called "Student Faces Expulsion for Facebook Study Group," and the comment thread offers a bunch of takes on the issue. (For a fuller version of the article, read "Student faces Facebook consequences.")

Seems to me that study groups are always helpful for learning something and that technology is just a magnifying glass, letting those study groups happen more quickly and remotely. In fact, students say that a Facebook study group is a "valid studying technique in the information age." Makes perfect sense -- as a technique for *learning* stuff.

But the way for instructors to find out if any particular student has learned anything [either with the help of a study group or not] is to provide some kind of opportunity for said student to show s/he has learned. In fact, I call tests and quizzes "opportunities to show me what you know" whenever I give them in class.

So I can't see why Facebook study groups would be cheating: if they're used to take exams, when those exams are not group exams, then they'd be cheating.

Day 1-of-5

The process is unwieldy and doesn't yield good colleagues: I'm talking about the hiring process for faculty members. We must ask exactly the same questions, in exactly the same order, by exactly the same questioners (members of the interview committee). Supposedly, the "union requires" this process, but I have my doubts: just who's interpreting the contract?

What's good is listening to colleagues talk about their teaching practices, innovative assignments, pedagogical commitments. Today I heard at least three ideas I'll steal (okay, borrow with attribution) for my own courses. And I also heard, twice, a name that I thought I knew and found out I didn't: David Bartholomae is not the same person as Donald Bartholomae, who's the guy I'd read and been familiar with. Harriet Malinowicz also talks about the confusion she had with them, too, in her JAC (formerly the Journal of Advance Composition) article here.

It's always good to find out you're wrong is you can find out how to correct it. Thanks, folks.

"Software Updates" Update

I was able to access my email only after calling the college's Help Desk (and I *hate* to ask for help like that - I want to figure it out myself!).

But the Help Desk phone number is nowhere to be found on the college's website, so I had to call the General Information number. The "operator" instantly had the number for me, which made me ask, "Have you been getting lots of calls for the Help Desk number?"
"Oh, yeah," she said. "The college just transitioned to Microsoft Office from Groupwise, you know."

Yes, I did know. I'd been warned ad nauseam to clean out my email boxes and transfer the files that were saved on my office computer because they would be *gone forever* (never mind that I haven't been able to access that machine since July because another person's using the machine and locked access to it; therefore, I have absolutely no idea what or whether I've lost anything of importance).

The helpful help desk employee answered my questions with more questions:

"Could you please help me access my email? My current passwords don't seem to work." [I wanted to let him know I'd tried my best and wasn't just calling him as a first resort.]

"What is your login?" [This word "login" can mean many things, and luckily I chose the right answer, which is a combination of letters also known as my "username" and my "Domain/user name" and my "Century Direct username." Consistency of terminology would be nice; it's a principle I teach my tech writing students.]

"It's {blah-blah}."

"Just a minute." [He then put me on hold for a few minutes and came back on the phone.]

"Are you Julie Daniels?"

"Yes."

"Go to Century homepage."

"Okay, right now?"

"Yes."

"Um, just a minute - I'll have to move to my computer." [A couple of minutes pass.]

"Click on 'employees' at the bottom [this way of logging in is not the usual way we've been taught . . .] - do you see?" [This last question is quite important because the link for employees on our college's homepage is extremely tiny and buried in a list of other words/phrases. You've gotta know it's there to find it, really, because the homepage is not designed with employees in mind, according to the web design team: our college's homepage is a marketing device, designed to market the college, whatever that means, and I have strong opinions about "what that means" that I'll talk about some other time.]

"Okay, I'm on the Employee Services page." [You'll see a LOT of information on this page, yet I just need my email access . . . .]

"Click on 'Outlook Mail' to the right." [To the right of what? Okay, the right-hand column, which is divided in two, okay I see the "Quick Links" with "Outlook webmail" as the fourth item in the list - who decided these should be the "quick links"?]

"Yeah, I got it and see how to login. I've typed my username."

"Password is {****}."

"There, okay, I'm in. Thanks. Can I change the password easily?"

"Yes. It's with 'Options' on the Outlook page." [Where the heck is "Options"? Oh, upper-right hand corner.]

"Okay, I'm set. Thanks a lot."

My helper was kind and knowledgeable, patient, too. His accent made it difficult to make out everything he said, so this conversation isn't quite verbatim. I bet he's had hundreds of these exchanges in the past 48 hours - poor guy.

But I'm finally able to access my email and things look similar to our old email client. The only missing piece I can see that I didn't expect: my email signature is missing, so I'll have to retype the "Earthworms are so pleasant" quote from Zoe.

Now I just have to figure out how to access my work files so that I can send an old conference proposal to a Metro State colleague who wants to use it as the basis of her own proposal. I've heard that the PDFs we're "required" to read before remote login are not helpful at all. Let's see how that goes!

Software Updates

Why would said updates have to take three days, during which no one could access her college email/files/electronic anything? And why when a faculty member is finally able to access her email account again, none of her passwords work? And why does the "document" said faculty member is supposed to read before accessing her electronic *files* NOT contain any information about how to access her email?

The infrastructure at my college is woefully inadequate [I originally typed "inadequote," a neologism I think I'll keep for my students: inadequate use of quotations!], and I can't figure out why: how come people do not/cannot do their jobs?

This frustration is not new, but it continues to sadden me. Institutions are not perfect, surely, but ours seems to be getting worse and worse and worse: yet we advertise madly at state athletic tournaments, so madly that my friends ask, "Is your college hard up for students?" Nope, I say, in fact we can't handle all the students we currently enroll. I really don't know why our marketing campaign is so intense and so aimed at "traditionally aged" students: we have plenty and can't address their needs already.

A frustrating mystery, sort of like software updates.

Midterm exam

Tonight's class is the first after spring break. I'd graded midterm exams over break (okay, I graded them today), and over a third of the class earned A grades: out of 30 students (one missed the exam), I had these eleven scores in the 90s (out of 100 possible points, up to three extra credit points)
-- 99 (yes!), 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93 (two of 'em), 91 (two, too).

Also plenty of B grades: 88 (two), 86, 84, 83 (two), 82. Add it up, and you'll find that 18 of 30 earned an A or B. That's 60% of the class - really great! They're getting it.

But the sad thing is that some students *completely* bombed the exam: one person only earned 39 points out of 100! And there was a score of 47, a 58, a 59, and then a 69 (that's four Fs and one D). I wonder if they've been listening or reading the material? A couple are students who never say a thing during discussion, so perhaps they aren't preparing. And another couple low scores are from students who say things, but I've suspected that they're parroting what they've found on the web or from outside source, not their own brains. Perhaps this exam score reflects that problem.

Our Shrinking Faculties

What's with the over-administration of higher ed? Sure, I know that the for-profit educational corporations have WAY more administrators/managers than they do faculty members (I know lots of these employees), but it looks as if traditional higher educational institutions are following suit.

In the latest issue of InsideHigherEd.com, you'll find the following data about "full time professional positions" in higher education: 50.6% faculty to 49.4% administrators in 2004, (in community colleges the ratio's a bit better: 63.6% faculty, 36.4% administrators in 2004).

But get this: in 2006, *every single type of institution* saw a rise in administrators and decline in faculty so that the overall percentages are now 48.6% faculty, 51.4% administrators (it's 61.4% faculty, 38.6% administrators in community colleges). So nationwide, the institutions that have been predicated on teaching, that exist precisely to teach, have less than half of their "professional positions" doing that teaching.

Of course, another way to interpret the data is to see that the teaching is not being done by "full time professional" folks; rather, contingent labor is the money-saving tactic used by those "full time professional" administrators. The teaching's done by part-time folks, adjuncts, contract workers.

Just what do all the administrators do, I wonder?

Thanks to The Cranky Professor for pointing this out.

News from the BBC

Why is it that the US news, as read on NPR, differs so much from the BBC? I get my news from NPR and the NYTimes online, and I haven't heard either of these two stories, which were on the BBC Worldservice tonight:

1) The first (and top) story I heard tonight on the radio is the resignation of William Fallon, U.S. Commander in the Middle East, our main military decision-maker in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Esquire magazine wrote a article saying he was the primary thing standing in the way of war with Iran, since our commander-in-chief seems bent on invading Iran. Bad idea, says Fallon, and so he gets canned. The NYTimes cover story is about the Spitzer prostitution scandal - who cares? The NPR top story was about Spitzer, too.

2) The third story I heard tonight on the radio was about sexually transmitted diseases in American teenage girls: evidently over one-quarter of girls ages 14-19 have at least one STD. Lots of questions arise, of course: What are the implications for health and fertility? Who's having sex with these girls? Where are the diseases coming from?

The main pedagogical conclusion to reach is that we have to help our students listen to the world's news to find out about ourselves: non-US media sometimes covers the US better than the US media. Duh!

BOT Awards

I'm on a committee to select MnSCU Board of Trustees (BOT) Awards for Excellence in Teaching - today was our first day-long meeting, 8:30-8:30, to select from among the 20+ portfolios submitted from about 15 campuses across the state. My own campus had one submission, which was too bad: we could have had three!

What a great group of people to select these awards. I'm meeting and working with faculty and administrators from as far away as Fergus Falls, Hibbing, and Grand Rapids. Also on the committee are administrators in the main MnSCU office who are just terrific: smart and committed to higher education in this state.

And what great portfolios; I'm already going to use some of the ideas I'm finding in them, especially around how to design syllabi, assess learning, engage with students. I have to say that we really have some extraordinary faculty members out in these two-year colleges. Students just don't know how lucky they are.

Last year was the first year of the awards, I think. It'll be interesting to see who's selected this year.

Toastmasters on YouTube

I've just discovered this guy named Taylor Mali. Check out what he says in response to "What do teachers make?" and his monologue called "The the Impotence of Proofreading."

And just for my pal PhilosoFact, here's a comedian called Don McMillan with "How NOT to Use PowerPoint." Enjoy!

Words = People, Places, Things?

Check out this video, found on Rhosa's Blog. I really dig typography.