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.

Midterm exam

I'm sitting in class waiting the last 40 minutes for the three students who are still writing an exam (oh, now Katrina's done, stapling forcefully, ready to go). Matthew gets up to sharpen his pencil - again. Kristi tilts her head to put her hair behind her ear, drink from a Nalgene.

The exam wasn't my best. I hate when I don't think I've asked good questions. The essay questions, especially, had a couple of clunkers, although the one that I added at the last minute seems to be the most popular: "Which one of the works we've read so far this semester has helped you begin to answer the questions we began the course with: What is America? Who are Americans? What does it mean to 'be American'?" Our of five question choices and 30 students, 15 students chose this one! I suppose that makes sense in an American Lit course (post Civil War lit).

I don't think the exam was hard, especially - but we'll see what the think. :-)

Committee work

Part of any faculty member's job, a part not many non-faculty people know about, is service to the institution. One form this service takes is committee work: joining and participating on committees that make up the infrastructure of the institution, committees that do the red-corpuscle work, delivering oxygen to the institution's vital organs so it continues to exist.

At universities and colleges with a traditional tenure-and-ranking system (with assistant-, associate-, and full-professor levels), this work is quantified and used for granting tenure and approving promotions. Some institutions even suggest the appropriate allocation of a faculty member's time: 30% of your work should be devoted to service, for instance, with 20% to teaching and 50% to research.

At a community college, however, this vital work is not required or rewarded in any way. At my college, for example, no faculty member is required to do anything at all other than be in a classroom for a certain amount of time each week and post some office hours when s/he is supposed to be available on campus outside of class.

So those of us who are temperamentally wired to contribute to our community, to make our workplaces work, choose to do so for the personal satisfaction it affords.

Or something like that. Maybe we choose committee work because we're easily bored and need variety.
Or maybe teaching our classes is easy and we need challenging work to fill our time.
Or maybe we crave conversation with human beings who are not our students.
Or maybe we used to have a research agenda but now don't (because it's not rewarded at a community college) and so we channel that research energy into other activities.
Or maybe we feel guilted into this work by our deans or department chairs.
Or maybe we feel an obligation to improve the health of the institution within which we work.
Or maybe we're adding lines to our CV so we can apply for jobs other places.
Or maybe a dean *is* rewarding us in a non-fiscal way for our work.
Or maybe we just like committees.

In my 20+ years in higher education, I've always been on at least two committees a year. The one I'm currently on, which is important and I'm very, very happy to be on, met for the first time this week. As I listened and participated in our conversation, I was reminded of a quotation, "All theory is autobiography," which I had read was attributed to Nietzsche (although googling it, I found Valery also credited, and the quotation as "every theory is autobiography" -- I'll have to do some more digging).

Thinking back to committees I've been on, this quotation also applies to decision-making: all *decisions* are autobiographical, in that we often decide something is the right way to go because we've experienced it before. Even in higher ed, where we'd hope that folks would make decisions based on logic or empirical evidence or objective reasoning because that's what we purport to teach, we are still human beings who make decisions based on association, personal experience, and our own reasons.

Plato and Aristotle -- and Quintilian and Cicero -- were right: logical reasoning *must* be taught formally, extensively, rigorously because it does not come most easily to human beings. We weak humans rely on logic least often when making decisions, yet to be truly educated, we should rely on it most often. It's a constant and ongoing project, this "education" thing. And ultimately, *that's* why I, personally, do committee work: for the education.

Free online learning?

So many kinds of online learning exist, obviously. I always use a CMS (Desire2Learn) with my courses at Century and at Metro State because it's what my colleges support. In the past, I've used other tools with my students (Yahoo! Groups, for example, and online tutorials for grammar/mechanics, and David A. McMurrey's online tech writing course as a supplement for my tech writing students). But I haven't really ever taken an online course myself - not wholly, just short-term workshops.

But lately, I've been wanting to learn HTML, something I know about and sort of know how to do, but not really. Today, I happened upon a great site called W3Schools for learning all kinds of things related to web building. The site even quotes 13th-century philosopher William of Ockam!

I'm enjoying playing around with the HTML tutorials, but like any language, it'll take me a while to achieve anything like fluency.

C & W Online

Here's the website for the 2008 Computers and Writing Online conference. This year's title: "Exposing the Sole of the Academy with Web 2.0: A Move Toward Radical Transparency."

Click around the site for great information about technology.

Plato's "Gorgias"

At the bottom of this blog's front page, I've listed books I've been reading lately: some textbooks, but mostly the "fun" reading I do in my "spare" time. (I do forget to add some of the things I read, but that's par for the course.)

Anyway, right now, I'm re-reading "Gorgias" and I'm not even sure why. I have always liked the campy opening scene, with Socrates coming late to a dinner party at Gorgias's home, arriving with his young pal, Chaerephon, who made them late because he was shopping(!). Another young man in the dialogue, Polus, gets a lot of Socrates's attention by taking Socrates's bait and answering questions that box himself in a corner, the corner Socrates wants him in.

But Socrates is a bit of a bully, I think, in this dialogue: he shifts the grounds for some of his questions, playing word games to entrap his interlocutors. In fact, the whole interaction seems to be a huge display of testosterone, a kind of ancient Greek antler fight between bucks. The different types of masculinity try to best the master masculinity. But he, through his superior (?) reasoning power, is able to emasculate them all by revealing their faulty thinking.

So why am I even bothering to read it, you ask? Well, I've been curious about the uses of analogy lately: when and how they're used. This dialogue includes SO many that are fun to study. It also contains, at least the translation I have (in Bizzell and Herzberg's The Rhetorical Tradition), plenty of casual language and metadiscourse that enables me to see the dialogue played out on stage: what would Socrates and Chaerephon be carrying when they arrive at Gorgias's house after shopping? What jewelry accessorizes Polus? How portly is Gorgias? And Callicles wears a vandyke for sure.

Words are fun

Scroll through the visual representation of the alphabet on this blog: abcdefghijkslmnopqrstuvwxyz by Dan Waber. He calls it an "acrylabet."