Higher Education Observer

I am not giving in. I have gotten the impression I am supposed to. Not directly, but subtly. But I won't. I will retire before I have to let students submit AI generated assignments, passing them off as their writing and original work.  Forgive the Fox News reference, but this is funny, sad, and informative:  https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/seinfeld-star-julia-louis-dreyfus-used-ai-write-acceptance-speech-mistaken-for-julia-roberts  Point: AI gets it wrong. Really wrong.  I have had a number of students try to pass off AI generated text (I don't call it writing--that is a human act, more on that below), and they do it in two ways:  Wholesale, in that they don't bother to edit or even look at what has been generated; they just put it in a Word document, label it their appropriate assignment, and submit, thinking I am too stupid to notice that 1. It doesn't address the assignment or prompt, 2. It reads blandly and inhumanely, 3. It has wo...

 

People tell me I will know when it is time to retire.  I think I know it's time--almost.  Retiring for me does not mean filling out the paperwork and walking away. I am so deeply entrenched in so many things that I have to spend a year untying knots in those ropes that bind me to the institution and responsibilities and others.   But I have informed my supervisor that I will relinquish my chair duties on a specific date. Whether I remain for a while to teach is not decided.  I have worked in higher education since January of 1978, so "I've done my time." And there are other matters  1. The constant change, sometimes seemingly just for the sake of change, is stifling. This semester we are dealing with a new faculty evaluation system, new core curriculum, new assessment procedures, and new hiring/HR policies. We also have to vacate our building, completely, for a period of renovation, and relocate, and oh, yes, teach and serve and do research/professional dev...

Podcasts have been around since the time of the iPod (2004 marks the first “podcast”) and have a longer history than our smart phones (born in 2007), the way most of us listen to them today. And we do listen to them. Depending on where you get your information (I used HubSpot DemandSage for this article), as of September 2023 there were 70 million episodes created by 5 million podcasters, listened to by more than 467 million people. That many podcasts gives a potential listener plenty to choose from: politics, literature, sports, business, religion, true crime, leadership, arts, marketing a small business . . . the list is endless. Some podcasts are very “niche,” while some are designed for a wide public. The most listened to podcaster? Love him or hate him, it’s Joe Rogan, yes, the Fear Factor guy. Finally, video podcasting is growing exponentially.    Let’s look four angles on podcasts.   PODCASTING AS EDUCATION   Ms. Amanda Triplett appr...

 I am posting this here for more access. It is not typical of what I post here, though.   Yesterday I interviewed a person for my podcast. That is not unusual. However, this experience was. First, it was deeply spiritual and intellectual. It was in a stimulating environment—not a videoconference, but in her home. Third, it was with a visual artist, only the second of those in my podcast career. And this is a snippet: “I lived near the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, and that had a big influence.” “You know, I was reading Psalm 143, and I think it was verse 5, where it says, ‘I muse on the works of Thy hands,’ and it occurred to me that that is what artists do. I know that in the original language it wasn’t the same, but in a museum I think we should muse.” “I was reading that this morning, too.” And discussion followed. Now, how unusual that we had read the same Scripture that morning! And that it came up in the conversation, and that it was releva...

 Maybe clickbait, but it got me:  https://getpocket.com/explore/item/7-brutal-truths-about-leadership-not-too-many-people-want-to-hear?utm_source=pocket-newtab  Valid principles, but so, so simplified. Maybe simplistic. Leadership is complicated, situational, multi-layered. We've been trying to figure it out for maybe 4000 years. We'll keep trying. These seven principles are a more "affective" approach. By that I mean these principles are concerned about the emotional, person-centered, perhaps collaborative rather than the intellectual or "power" side of the equation.  I won't say feminine; I do not want to add to lend credence to the mythology that woman or "female" means weak, emotional, deferential, or as is more popular today, more people-centered, better listening, and more facilitation of the group.

 My teaching was far less frustrating this term. I speak specifically of the first-year-experience course I taught (two f2f sections and one online). That is not to say the pass rates were good. They were not, but I cannot blame myself in any way. I was attentive, organized, reasonable in the demands of the class, supportive, prepared, and, well, happy. I posted weekly videos for the online class. I had lots of class activities.  My two basic speech classes, same thing. I do believe, after all these years, I will back off a bit, though. Wait until the fourth meeting to have a speech, rather than the third. Wait until the fifth week for the first major outlined speech, not the fourth. Drop a small assignment.   The online business communication just went through an update to prepare it for summer school's shorter session, and I hope it works. There is no end to improvements to classes.  Online is all about structure, engagement, and presence, and about a deep tim...

  https://rss.com/podcasts/dialogues-with-creators/939901/ This episode of my podcast (which has a second part)  is a little different. The mother of a son with an autism diagnosis talks about how she used her creativity in his upbringing. I think it will help many.

 I was trying to rhyme with that title but didn't quite get it.  In a training/development session for our version of first-year experience on Friday, I talked about how I planned to not start "by hitting the ground running."  I always do that. No time to waste, I front load the class, I'm not going to spend time easing into it, just go, go, go.  The only rule is work.  And in my most recent failure in teaching the course, it didn't work. They were overwhelmed and never caught up.  So I will take it easier and work up to what we will do, not cutting out, but remembering less is more.   And that might just work for other classes.  I am interrogating all the time. The phrase comes from a more progressive source that I would ascribe to, but I like the concept.  Ask questions. Live the questions. 

I think we do need a new word for reflection, as it is so misused and overused.   Controlled, focused personal investigation or interrogation. The latter sounds like a criminal proceeding, so probably not; it assumes guilt, and what I want to get away from is how we prioritize deficiency and the need for improvement rather than strengths and what the student does know and why—or how what they know is incomplete but a building block for what the “next step” is.   I have not always followed this principle but I see its value now. I have been far too fundamentalistic in my whole life, and I so want to change that, to drop the negativity, the gap-emphasis, and see what’s there rather than what is not there.   Reflection—or this focused, intentional, controlled investigation and assessment of experience—should start with the positive. It should have a system and framework.   We should teach this starting in freshman year, and we should teach a form of it that is infor...

Controlled failure. That is what a college classroom allows. Controlled failure doesn’t mean “no failure.” There will be failure, for many. But it is under controlled conditions. This is why formative assessments are so very important. Those are the controls under which they can learn from errors, as long as there is reflection or better, controlled, focused personal investigation involved as to why they got 75% of the questions right and 25% wrong. (How much of human knowledge is later decided by the discipline or society to be wrong?) It is the current state of the knowledge they get right and wrong, not the big questions of the human existence which they also should be examining.   Example: I teach how to write resumes and cover letters. Rarely are they up to par or even really good examples of how the students could present themselves for career opportunities. And I want them to know they could always do it better, giving suggestions as someone who 1. Hi...

 In a beginning-of-the-year faculty development session, the speaker introduced us to Adverse Childhood Experiences. We did a strange and possibly intrusive but actually helpful exercise. The ACEs were listed on a sheet of paper, and we were to check off the ones we had. Then we crumpled the paper, threw it a box, and they were redistributed. We were then supposed to stand up for the number of ACEs the person whose crumpled paper we received.  I did a similar experience in my class, trying to say, "There are other people here who have had similar experiences" as you. There were other questions about their struggles in the semester, again, trying to let them see, anonymously, that other students have similar experiences and they are not alone. OR UNIQUE, which many of them think they are.  It was an attempt at solidarity and connection. Did it work? I don't know, because I didn't want to ask. I don't want to be intrusive. Thoughts on this?

I am a participant in a research program for a dissertation on OER and OEP. I have to respond in writing to three sets of questions and will be interviewed next Friday by the researcher. I am going to share some of my reflections in answer to the questions here.  The question had to do with  I wanted to get a little more insight in OEP; I had a sense of its meaning but resorted to Wikipedia, and the article cites Catherine Cronin, Iain McClaren, and others from the scholarly literature:   “OEP is a broad concept which can be characterised by a range of collaborative pedagogical practices that include the use, reuse, and creation of OER and that often employ social and participatory technologies for interaction, peer-learning, knowledge creation and sharing, empowerment of learners, and open sharing of teaching practices.” That’s what I thought, but it did give me a basis. So to answer the question, in this particular class, I would say I am empowering learners by crea...

 My w hole life needs a constant reframing toward positivity.  I am reminded of Martin Luther's first of 95 theses:  When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” [Matthew 4:17], he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance. I do not take this to mean, as perhaps Luther did, that we are constantly sinning and need to repent in sorrow every minute for our errors and disobedience. I take it to mean we must constantly "recalibrate": reflect and get back on track.  We are like a car with really bad alignment, and if we don't consciously hold the steering wheel and make choices in the minute, we are going to go off the road. Course correction is needed, and sometimes that includes confession and forgiveness; Luther is probably correct that we need it more than we think we do and more than we practice it.  As for me, my "car" goes off the road to negativity. Daily practicing positivity is getting my tires aligned, not just fighting the bad...

 I think a lot about the process of reflection. It's kind of my thing. I really don't think we professors do enough of it. Because even done right, it's painful (don't worry, I know I am using fragments. I can smell one a mile away, which annoys my students.) By "done right," I mean balanced. One conclusion from my dissertation research was that there is too much "rush to judgment" and "negativity" in reflection. "What did I do wrong and what can I do to fix it?" This violates good manners to oneself and the reflective thinking process we were all taught back in the 1970s (and still works, thank you very much). Why don't we start with reviewing the good? Actually, reflection should start with a deep dive of the whole experience. If I come out of a class that was a disaster (my immediate feeling), my first response is "oh, heavens, what am I going to do?" when it should be, "How did I prepare, how did the student...

This is a post from a MOOC I am taking.  The prompt was "How can the concepts of identity, privilege, power and positionality manifest differently in the face-to-face versus online learning setting"? Well, to be incredibly basic, in f2f we can see everyone, so we and the students can’t hide in F2f. I am reminded of the old New Yorker cartoon of two dogs on computers. One says, "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog." Honestly, in online, a student can make up a whole persona if they like, as long as they do the work. That's somewhat harder f2f. And that lets our latent prejudices come out.  And we can have latent prejudices about any number of things, many of which we are not fully conscious. That is somewhat slower to happen in online, but it still can. If you use video, if a person has an ethnic name, if they tell their story (I had an online student in jail last semester), if, if, if . . . prejudices and biases come out, and there’s ...

 Once a professor gets on the online teaching train, there is no getting off... For me it has become an obsession. I feel this massive obligation to my online students to be checking in with them several times a day, at any hour I am awake. I do it not long before I go to bed (which doesn't always mean sleep, but at least winding down) and within a half hour after rising.   Why? Well, I am over conscientious anyway, foolishly so. But there are other reasons: Online teaching gives one a lot of flexibility. I don't have to be in a room with them 3 hours a week. If I want to take the afternoon off and make up for it after dinner, I can (and often do).  The students expect it, and since they are usually working jobs, they need the professor at odd times, with legitimate questions (like last night, a glitch in the test, my fault).  Creating a robust online course means things go wrong (again, human error) and have to be addressed.  And then there are the almight...

I used to think rigor meant a lot of work.  That means I have to grade it, and sometimes it does become busy work and excessive. I require short discussion posts about certain assignments, and I warn them to keep it to two sentences. "You don't want to write more and I don't want to read it." They get the point. Rigor means justifiable high standards, communicated clearly, with consequences but also access to needed resources.  Justifiable high standards: Writing should be reader-ready. I teach writing, so superficial mistakes are unacceptable. There are abundant tools to avoid it.  Communicated clearly: Transparency in teaching and learning is a valuable practice. Look it up. But don't, like me, overexplain.  With consequences: See my Revise and Resubmit  post earlier.  Access to needed resources: How I define equity. It is unfair to assign a task that not everyone has the tools to complete-- if they put the effort in.  I believe in the meritocracy of...

Is it me, or do you feel that with freshmen, we are mostly fighting what they have been taught in high school versus building on it? 1. "Our teachers didn't expect anything to be turned in on time during COVID." 2. "My high school teachers said college professors are mean." 3. "In high school I could take tests over."  4. "I got good grades in this subject in high school." 5. "We got to work on the assignments and homework in class in high school." What else? I'm sure you've heard statements like these--to say nothing about wrong concepts of the disciplines we teach.  This is the place for comments!

 Any academic who has tried to be published in a journal has probably gotten an R&R review: Revise and resubmit.  In regard to all the assignments I had to asses (grade) this week, I gave a lot of R&R (translated) grades or feedback.  Why? Because giving a F helps nobody. Because they need to do it right. They need to know that crappy work is not acceptable. We don't get by in life.  Now, how to handle this is a matter for debate and discussion. Should they get a penalized grade for the R& R (not full credit for the revision)? How much time do they have? How many are they allowed? How do you decide it's worth it? Doesn't this make more work for the professor?  Great questions. I would say there's a lot of wiggle room here. Maybe just one R and R allowed for the class (otherwise it creates a pattern). The professor can grade when he/she gets around to it. Only a few days for the revision to be submitted (it's overdue already). As for more work, well, ...

This semester, if I haven't said this yet,  I have a passel of students this semester.  Online course for the system: 24 Professional communication: 25 Two Fundamentals of Speech: 50 Four Perspectives (first year seminar):  20, 20, 50.  So, total of almost 200. And every single one had at least one writing assignment due this week. Actually, three in one case. So, I had 250 assignments to grade.  Well, not really, only theoretically. Because they all just didn't do them. In which case, it became my responsibility and obligation to tell someone higher than (or to the side of me) that the student is not keeping up.  Or that they are not attending class. A person who does not work in access higher education will probably say, "Well, don't the students know they didn't do it? Don't they know they are not attending class?" Yes, of course, but we are supposed to let them know, or I guess, that we noticed. Big Brother (or Sister) is watching!  It's a nudge. ...

Isn't grading the worst?   That's my lead (lede?) I didn't bury it.  I have probably 100 assignments to "assess" today and tomorrow. Some very short, some more involved.  The issue is how students perceive a grade, really, or how we have taught them to.  My intentionality project this time is to provide better feedback on the assignment, with more personal touch. I still have to put a number on it (using a rubric, of course). That's the worst part and all the students really look at, sometimes.  It would be good if Learning Management systems had a "read this first, respond, then get the number" framework.  I guess we could do that ourselves, somehow. We could require a response to every major assignment to see if there is understanding of the evaluation or assessment.  Yes, that is something to think about.  HUMMMM.