Teaching Thursdays

Reflecting on Interdisciplinary Teaching

March 18, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Bret Weber, Department of Social Work, University of North Dakota

Bret has a Ph.D. in history and has taught in departments of History both at UND and elsewhere; he also has a M.S.W. and currently is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work.

Interdisciplinary teaching proposes to help students apply and transfer knowledge, methods, and skills from supposedly distinct fields of study. One implied benefit is that this helps translate knowledge across the university, as well as from the classroom to lives and jobs beyond the academy. It is a popular concept that university leaders encourage in their rhetoric, though entrenched structures that grew up with educational institutions provide a formidable blockade that prevents most of us with even half an interest from actually doing it.

Some of the obvious problems include the fact that disciplines often have their own unique jargon for broad concepts. There are also various professional biases, egos, and inferiority complexes. Interdisciplinary efforts are also made problematic by administrative aspects including different semester schedules, accountability standards, and even arcane matters of scheduling and teacher deployment that vary not only from department to department, but also from college to college.

Additional distinctions may be less obvious until one actually takes the full plunge and moves from one discipline to the other. Regardless of credentials, training, and experience, there may be a nagging tendency to view the ‘newcomer’ as an outsider and to question the legitimacy of the boundary crosser. Similarly, there may be different attitudes regarding the balance between teaching, scholarship, and service, and there may even be strikingly different definitions or views of what these things mean. For instance, disciplines value books and journal articles according to their own calculus, and service may mean obligation to dull department meetings in one discipline and broad ethical commitments to social justice in another.

There are also dramatic differences in terms of the student populations. These might be gender-based: some disciplines have a fairly even mix where others may be dominated by a single gender. There is also a difference in terms of how the students come to the classroom: Professional programs tend toward cohort models, and when students ‘travel’ as a group they may develop cliques, anxieties, and distinct cultures that affect the classroom in ways that are more dynamic than in a classroom in which most of the students and the instructor are meeting for the first time at the beginning of the semester.

On balance, however, I believe the journey so far contains more rewards than perils. I have found interdisciplinary teaching to be especially beneficial in bridging the approaches of more traditional academic studies and professional programs. In those cases, the ‘real-world’ focus of ‘applied’ studies helps students to understand the practical potential of their university courses. On the flip side, the academic approach brings an intellectual rigor to applied studies that pushes students beyond simply “jumping through the hoops.”

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Bret Weber · Interdisciplinary Teaching

Teaching the Writers Conference: Link Spot Link! How to use electronic literature in your courses now (part 2)

March 16, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Deena Larsen, Writer

Deena Larsen has written over 30 elit pieces. You can find out more about elit—and get writing exercises to try this out on your own—from her textbook introduction, Fundamentals. She will speak about elit Tuesday March 23 at 4 pm in the Memorial Union. This is the third in a series of posts designed to suggest ways to incorporate The 41st Annual Writers Conference into classes on campus. Check out Crystal Albert’s introduction to this series of posts, Deena’s first post, and check back on next Tuesday for the next installment.

This installment to Deena Larsen’s introduction to electronic literature, Link Spot Link, is provided in conjunction with the 41rst annual Writers Conference on March 23. In these introductions, Larsen will introduce you and your students to the immense possibilities of meaning inherent in electronic literature. Electronic literature provides new rhetorical devices that were not available until the mid-1990s. Using the web and HTML, we can now link to documents. Using Flash, we can animate sequences of text and imagery and incorporate sound. Electronic literature uses these devices to add meaning to texts. This introduction will examine just how electronic elements (links, sound, navigation, imagery, sound, animation, and structure) can highlight textual meanings, add subtle references, subvert the overt meanings, and play lots of wonderful tricks with what once was a simple text.

Be sure to check out the first four parts to this series:

The English Department and Beyond: the UND Writers Conference (Crystal Alberts)
Teaching the Writers Conference: Link Spot Link – Electronic Literature Made Easy (Deena Larsen)
Teaching the Writers Conference: Link Spot Link! How to use electronic literature in your courses now (Deena Larsen)

Part 2. Explore Electronic Literature on Your Own

Imagery and Sound

This exercise shows how electronic literature uses imagery, motion, and sound to enhance meaning. First, read the image below (from Rob Kendall’s Faith) and write out how you feel about this—what is the text saying?

clip_image002

Next, go here and read the actual poem (from beginning to end) WITHOUT music. What is the text saying now? How has the meaning changed? Talk about one motion, color, disappearance/fading, or other visual cue of the text that really spoke to you. Why did that appeal to you? What do you think it meant?

Click on replay and read the poem WITH music. How are the instruments related to ideas and themes in the text? What new insights did you gain into the poem?



Links and Secrets

clip_image004

This next exercise shows an example of how links can add meaning and how finding the secret places of texts can change meaning.

First, read the main text of Deena Larsen’s I’m Simply Saying (screen on the left) and write out what you think the author is trying to convey.

clip_image006

Next, examine the text with the link words highlighted (in bold blue). These show the links (doors into other portions of the text). How does this emphasis—choosing these words as the link/doors—change the story? What would have happened if other words (for example, “change,” “everything,” “end”) were emphasized as links instead?

clip_image008

Now, read the words with one of the secret levels caught and revealed to show a different story behind the lines.

What further insights do you have about this piece from these words?

Go to the actual piece and look at how movement and imagery also affect the meaning: http://www.canberra.edu.au/centres/inflect/02/larsen/simply7.html

Part 3. Questions to Ponder for Link Spot Link: Deena Larsen

Electronic literature isn’t just bling—it is literature that uses electronic elements as an integral part of the work to convey meanings in ways never before possible. This introduction will examine just how electronic elements (links, sound, navigation, imagery, sound, animation, and structure) can highlight textual meanings, add subtle references, subvert the overt meanings, and play lots of wonderful tricks with what once was a simple text. This lecture is with the 41rst Annual University of North Dakota Writer’s Conference. For a longer explanation of these devices, see Fundamentals.

Links

What are links?
How can links provide connections for meanings? (Discuss one example—how would the text be different if there were no links?)
Your class: Find a connection between concepts you are studying and write a short explanation of these connections.

Imagery

How can imagery affect the reading and meaning of a text? How did the images in Rob Kendall’s Study in Shades affect the meaning of the piece?

What does placement do for meaning? How would Peter Howard’s The Rainbow Factory differ if the texts were found on a rainbow instead of an upper and lower factory window?
Your class: Find an illustration of a concept you are studying and explain how the illustration relates to that concept. How else could this concept be illustrated?

Sound

How can music or sound affect the reading and meaning of a text? How did the sound in Rob Kendall’s Faith or Deena Larsen’s I’m Simply Saying work with the text to provide meaning?
Your class: Find sounds that are an appropriate backdrop for a concept you are studying and explain how the sounds relate to that concept. What sounds (voices, music, etc) would not work with this concept? Why?

Secrecy

What additional nuances can secrets give to the text? What happens if readers don’t find the secrets—are they left with a false impression of the piece? Are secrets a “fair” thing to do to a reader? Play with the corners in I’m Simply Saying. If you had not found these secret texts, how would your reading be different?

Your class: What if the concept you are studying were a secret revealed only after you had climbed a 20,000 foot mountain? How would that effort of finding out the secret affect your reaction to the concept?

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Deena Larsen · Writers Conference

Teaching the Writers Conference: Link Spot Link! How to use electronic literature in your courses now

March 11, 2010 · 1 Comment

Deena Larsen, Writer

Deena Larsen has written over 30 elit pieces. You can find out more about elit—and get writing exercises to try this out on your own—from her textbook introduction, Fundamentals. She will speak about elit Tuesday March 23 at 4 pm in the Memorial Union. This is the second in a series of posts designed to suggest ways to incorporate The 41st Annual Writers Conference into classes on campus. Check out Crystal Albert’s introduction to this series of posts, Deena’s first post, and check back on next Tuesday for the next installment.

An introduction to electronic literature, Link Spot Link, will be provided in conjunction with the 41rst annual Writers Conference on March 23. Deena Larsen, electronic literature writer, will introduce you and your students to the immense possibilities of meaning inherent in electronic literature. Electronic literature provides new rhetorical devices that were not available until the mid-1990s. Using the web and HTML, we can now link to documents. Using Flash, we can animate sequences of text and imagery and incorporate sound. Electronic literature uses these devices to add meaning to texts. This introduction will examine just how electronic elements (links, sound, navigation, imagery, sound, animation, and structure) can highlight textual meanings, add subtle references, subvert the overt meanings, and play lots of wonderful tricks with what once was a simple text.

You can get your classes involved—and add new layers of meanings to the materials you are teaching now. This packet explains four electronic literature elements (links, imagery, sound, and secrets) and connects them with pedagogical suggestions for courses in Literature, History/Political Science, Math/Physics/Sciences, Art/Music/Drama/Dance, Languages/English, Philosophy/Religion, and Education.

You can use these handouts as they are or customize them to your classes. These assignments can provide a way to integrate students’ common experiences of surfing the web, watching movies, texting, etc. to the works you are teaching and the concepts you are conveying now. These can be used for extra credit assignments—without taking up any class time— or can be incorporated into a class discussion.

  • Enhance your current lectures and assignments with electronic literature rhetorical devices. The first part explains the element and provides a short explanation of how you can use that element to enhance your teaching or to assign some “extra credit” to students to help them explore the concepts you are conveying now. The exercises are divided into different academic disciplines based on the thought techniques and assumptions used in each.
  • Explore some electronic literature works. The second part shows how these elements work in two simple electronic literature works. You can pass these around for interested students or assign this part as extra credit as well.
  • Attend the lecture and answer questions. The third part has questions that students will be able to answer after attending Deena Larsen’s lecture. You can assign the general questions or use the “Your Class” questions as extra credit assignments for your specific materials.

Starting places for electronic literature

  • To see most of what is out there, go to Electronic Literature Organization and click on Directory for a list of electronic works and journals that feature elit.
  • To get a longer explanation of these devices and examples of how these are used in electronic literature, see Fundamentals.
  • To find a quick read, go to Deena Larsen’s webshelf that lists electronic literature organized by the time it takes to read that work (from simple to complex).

Part 1A. Links

A link in hypertext (and electronic literature) is like a door into a new portion of the text (usually called a “node”). The link has three parts:

  1. The origin node (or room where the door is)
  2. The link itself, which is usually a phrase or a word in the origin node (the door itself)
  3. The destination node (or room where you end up after you go through the door)

Each of these parts has a meaning that is influenced now by the other parts of the link. So when you have a node with a link, you no longer just have that node to consider—you have the added meanings of the linked word or phrase and the connection with the destination node.
Discussing links is a great way to understand connections in general: cause and effect, time sequence, similarities, opposites, necessary conditions, etc.

Literature

Links add layers of meanings and relate themes. Literature works within a series of themes and connected ideas. To see this in action:

  1. Take two pages from the book you are reading now as your “nodes.”
  2. Choose one page as an origin node and the other page as a destination node
  3. Highlight a word or phrase in the origin node as the link
  4. Read the origin node, then the linked words, then the destination node out loud

Write a short paper about how the meaning changed. What words in the origin text now relate to the destination text—in ways that they would not have had you simply turned the page? What new insights do you now have into the characters or the situation?
Note that this may add meaning to the original text that the author may or may not have intended—which can be a discussion in and of itself. This exercise is really a lesson in interpretation and in extending the text—in effect, you become a cowriter as you extend the meaning inherent in the text by using these new rhetorical devices.

History/Political Science

Links and connections provide insights into actions and reactions. Choose two events in the period or theories you are studying. List as many connections as you can—and explain how these connections work. (Are the same people involved—how did one aspect of what they did tie into another aspect? How are people related or connected—how did these relations affect what happened? Did people read or believe the same materials—how did these common beliefs influence their actions?)

Math/Physics/Sciences/Engineering

In the topics you are discussing, look for connections. How does this topic relate to the previous topic of discussion? Do the exercise shown for literature with one of the texts you are using. How do the concepts relate to each other? Describe these relationships. Could x work with or happen without y? Why or why not?

Art/Music/Drama/Dance

Themes provide the basic connections between various portions of a work and function as links. In the work you are creating, studying, or performing, what are the themes? How does repetition work as a link to connect various portions? Can you perform or create something and over-emphasize these links? What happens when these connections (which are usually in the background) come out into the foreground?

Languages /English

Connections between words have their own field of study: Etymology. Choose several words you are working with and look up their origins. What other words are connected to these words? How are the concepts connected? Write a short paragraph about the ideas behind these connections. (For example, in English “disaster” is connected to “stars” as people blamed their fates on the movements of the stars and planets. What other words are connected to “stars”? Why?)

Philosophy/Religion

What are the connections between two ideas you have been studying? Explain their relationships. Do the exercise shown for literature with one of the texts you are using. How do the author’s ideas relate to each other? (For example: Are there underlying assumptions common to both? Are they opposites or contradictions? Does one idea require the other?) Explain these relationships in a short paper.

Education

Take the lesson materials you are designing now—describe how you could link from one part of the material to another part of the material to show a connection between concepts. Show how this can help explain concepts—why is the first concept {an opposite of/the same as/an effect from/a cause of} the second concept?



Part 1B. Imagery

Imagery can also add tone and emotional meaning. Images in electronic literature can be colored text, a montage of pictures, a navigational image (where you click on parts of the image to reach other parts of the work), a movie, etc.

Literature

First, place one image by a page of the text you are reading. Then read the same page with a different image. Write a short paper about how the reading experience changed. What elements in the images you chose relate to the page (text, character, situation, etc.)? What words on that page take on a different meaning when contrasted with a different image?

History/Political Science

Images deeply influence zeitgeist, thoughts, and subsequent actions (for example, how did the tricolor image of Obama influence the election?). But images also inform our current thinking about that age. What image or icon “defines” the moment of history or exemplifies the theory in Political Science that you are studying? For example, the Life photo of the sailor kissing the girl may define World War II. Create a “quiz:” Choose 4 popular images of various time periods and ask your classmates to identify the era based on the image you chose. Or choose 4 popular images of movements or activities in a particular time period and ask classmates to identify those movements or activities (for example, suffragettes or Gibson girls).

Math/Physics/Sciences/Engineering

How can visually showing a concept make it easier to understand the concept? Think about the diagrams we use (molecular models, geometric figures). How do these diagrams convey concepts? What are the conventions for displaying concepts you are working with? How did these conventions arise? What would happen to your—and the conventional—view of these concepts if you used other ways to display these concepts?

Art/Music/Drama/Dance

What happens to a piece of art when viewed with different background music (jazz, Rachmaninov, 14th century madrigals, etc.)? What happens when art is viewed in contrast with other images or venues (for example a sculpture placed in a backdrop of a kindergarten vs a convent)? How does a dance or a musical performance differ when performed against various stage backdrops (for example, a blank curtain, an indoor scene, an outdoor scene)?

Languages/English

Find a painting from your culture and an explanation of that image both in English and in your language. List words used to describe that image in both English and in your language (for example: warm, colorful, bright, simple, light). How do the words differ in English and in your language? Now find another painting and an explanation and list the words used to describe this painting (for example: cold, bitter, frenetic). Take both paintings and the lists of words in your language (without English translations) and ask your classmates to match up the word lists with your paintings. How did these match up?

Philosophy/Religion

Throughout the ages, people have illustrated philosophies and religions to explain concepts (think of the sculptures around the doors of gothic cathedrals). What images have been used to explain the concepts you are studying now? What other images could you use to explain these concepts?

Education

How can you incorporate drawing into your lesson plans to draw out visual learners? How can merging art and text make meanings clearer?



Part 1C. Sounds

Sounds provide tone, rhythm, meter, and tension and are an integral part of meaning in electronic literature. Even before IPods, sounds permeated our lives. Electronic literature uses sound to convey emotional tone, provide a sense of place, and to overlay meaning onto the text. Sound may be spoken words (which may or may not mirror the text), music (which may emphasize the mood or suggest other possible underlying moods), sound effects (which may emphasize the action or hint at other actions), etc.

Literature

Read a page or paragraph in your current work while playing first a happy, fast piece of music and then read the same material again but with a sadder, slower piece of music. Write a short paper about how the reading experience changed for you. How did you feel when reading the piece? How did your mood change? How did your internal changes change the way you felt or thought about the piece?

History/Political Science

Sounds define an age and influence the ideas and actions of the people. How does sound influence what people do and believe (for example, why did McCain chose “Running on Empty” for a campaign ad)? In the period you are studying, find one popular or iconic song or piece of music. How does that help explain the age and how people thought? What if the music in this age had been different (rap instead of Bach, blues instead of bugles)? Write a short paper on what might have happened.

Math/Physics/Sciences/Engineering

Music has mathematical symmetry; sound has physical properties. Take a concept that you are working on and find appropriate music. What did you consider when you chose this music? How does the concept you are studying relate to the sound?

Art/Music/Drama/Dance

What are the relationships between imagery, sound, and motion? Take an aspect of the piece that you are creating or performing, and experiment with different visual, auditory, and kinesthetic layers. What happens to a slow piece of music when played with a fast video or with a fast dance? What happens to music with different scenic backdrops (played when viewing scenes of mountain landscapes vs battlefields)?

Languages/English

Not only does music define a culture, but each language has its own music. Listen to something in your language—a news broadcast, an explanation of a museum piece. Draw a line on a page as you listen to that piece that represents to you how the language sounds. You could draw short thick lines for fast paces, long loopy lines for dipthong vowels, etc. Listen to the piece again and draw on the same page—only with a different color. How does the music of the language change for you as you hear it again?

Philosophy/Religion

Sounds influence our thoughts and ideas. Think about the historical period of the person who wrote the concepts you are studying now. What music was popular? What sounds would the author have heard? What would have happened to the ideas had the music been different?

Education

How can you incorporate sounds into your lesson plans to draw out auditory learners? How could the use of sound improve a lesson? What would happen if you taught a concept with soft slow music in the background? What if you taught that same concept with a staccato, beat music in the background? Could students create their own music and “rap” the concepts? Write a short paper or give a short demonstration.



Part 1D. Secrets

Some nodes in electronic literature works are hidden–they are not accessible by any visible link in the work and you can find them only if you know where they are or stumble across some invisible link. Secret nodes tantalize the reader, providing more interest in the piece. Readers “in the know” are like players in an online game who have reached a certain level and attained enlightenment. Think about how this works in movies, for example, The Crying Game or the Sixth Sense.

Literature

Take a paragraph or short section from the work you are reading. What would happen if this paragraph were hidden on the inside of the book jacket (so you had to take the cover off the book to read it)? How would that secrecy provide an importance to the text it does not possess “on the open page”? What would the work be like if this text were not visible and only accessible as a secret?

History/Political Science

Were there secret societies or codes in the period/culture you are studying? How were they discovered? What role did secret societies play in the period you are discussing? How do people react when they are “in the know” and are not “in the know”? What happens when these secrets are revealed? What role do secret societies (e.g., the Skull and Bones club) play today?

Math/Physics/Sciences/Engineering

How can hiding something make it more clear? How do detection methods for easter eggs in videos relate to detection/problem solving methods in physics, math, and sciences? How were the topics you are discussing found/discovered/explained (for example, benzene rings)? What was secret about them? How do people make discoveries? What are “clues” to look for? How does looking for secrets inform scientific methods?

Art/Music/Drama/Dance

What meanings are hidden underneath surface of the work that you are creating or performing? Experiment with embodying secrets in your work or performance. What happens when part—but not all—of the audience knows what is going on?

Languages/English

Languages have subtle meanings and nuances. First, think about the “unwritten” meanings of some words in English. Often, even native speakers are not aware of these meanings—which can cause trouble (for example, the latest flap about tea bags). Find a word in your language that has other meanings (google some of the words you are studying and read the contexts or find a book of idioms in your language and examine some of those idioms).

Philosophy/Religion

Many basic concepts are shrouded in mystery. What enticement does this mystery hold? Imagine if the concept you are studying were only revealed to “worthy acolytes.” Would the concept be more appealing? Would it change how you view the concept? Explain.

Education

People like mysteries. How could you make a game of a concept you are teaching? Could you hide something in the room and have a treasure hunt? How can hinting at something and not explaining it overtly help to convey a concept?

→ 1 CommentCategories: Deena Larsen · Writers Conference

Teaching the Writers Conference: Link Spot Link – Electronic Literature Made Easy

March 9, 2010 · 2 Comments

Deena Larsen, Writer

Deena Larsen has written over 30 elit pieces. You can find out more about elit—and get writing exercises to try this out on your own—from her textbook introduction, Fundamentals. She will speak about elit Tuesday March 23 at 4 pm in the Memorial Union. This is the second in a series of posts designed to suggest ways to incorporate The 41st Annual Writers Conference into classes on campus. Check out Crystal Albert’s introduction to this series of posts and check back on Thursday for the next installment.

Electronic literature (elit) depends on features in digital media to add meaning to the words themselves.

Links

Unlike a paper book, where you turn pages, in elit you have to create a way to get from one piece of text to another. (Pieces of text are called “nodes.”) So we make links, which function as doors to these nodes. A link has three parts:

  1. The origin node (or room where the door is)
  2. The link itself, which is usually a phrase or a word in the origin node (the door itself)
  3. The destination node (or room where you end up after you go through the door)

If you have a room without a door, then you can not go anywhere. If you have too many doors in a room, you could be confused. If you have doors that don’t lead where you think they will or are not indicated well, you could end up in a closet when you wanted the kitchen. So a mark of a good elit piece is links that help you walk through the piece.

Just as doors add décor to a room, links add meaning to an elit piece. Each of the parts of the link has a meaning that is influenced now by the other parts of the link. So when you have a node with a link, you no longer just have that node to consider—you have the added meanings of the linked word or phrase and the connection with the destination node.

Deena Larsen’s Ferris Wheels shows how links can change the meaning of the piece. On the node, Against Tides, the last line reads: “Why do I think I can swim against the tides of fate yet once more?” “Fate” links to the node “Turn” which shows a happy old couple—showing that the narrator thinks that the tides of fate could be happy. How would the story be different if that word “fate” had actually gone to the node “Black,” which talks about the narrator’s fantasies of suicide?

Susan Gibb uses links to emphasize the confusion of the narrator in Blueberries. In the node “Time,” she writes: “It’s because I’ve lost my hold on reality. Time has been sliding around between present and past, past and future. Things happen that I recall having happened before.” The link on “future” goes to voices from the narrator’s distant past and the link on “past” goes to a present moment (called “Present”). These disconnect” further underscore the blurring between present and past, past and future. If the links had been what we normally expect—that is had linked to an event in the past on “past” or an event in the future on “future,” then the narrator’s confusion would not be so clearcut.

Images

Imagery can also add tone and emotional meaning. Images in elit can be colored text, a montage of pictures, a navigational image (where you click on parts of the image to reach other parts of the work), video, etc. These images work in a similar way to Art Spiegelman’s comics. Robert S. Leventhal, in Responses to the Holocaust: A Hypermedia Sourcebook for the Humanities said of Art Spiegelman’s Maus : “the image is never left to stand alone, but is always caught up in the differential between narrative, image, dialogue and reflection.”

Rob Kendall’s Study in Shades shows the silhouettes of a father and daughter, who are telling their sides of the story. Watch how the images change—the father gets darker as the daughter realizes she is losing him to Alzheimer’s, and the daughter gets lighter as the father realizes he can no longer remember who she is. The images here create the progress of the story.

clip_image002

In Stuart Moulthrop’s Pax, readers have to click on moving images to get text to appear in the right column—creating a video game effect.

clip_image004

Deena Larsen’s I’m Simply Saying has moving texts that play with the main part of the piece to make new meanings. This screenshot captures words in the third line changing between “connections,” “projections,” and “conjectures.”

clip_image006

Sound

Sounds provide tone, rhythm, meter, and tension and are an integral part of meaning in elit. Even before IPods, sounds permeated our lives. Elit uses sound to convey emotional tone, provide a sense of place, and to overlay meaning onto the text. Sound may be spoken words (which may or may not mirror the text), music (which may emphasize the mood or suggest other possible underlying moods), sound effects (which may emphasize the action or hint at other actions), etc.

Stuart Moulthrop’s Under Language uses sound to provide other “voices” than just the written text, as he explains in his instructions on reading the text: “When you call up a line, you should encounter an accompanying audible text, read to you by an unreal person, supplying the voice of the poem. . . These audible readings do not echo the visible lines. Rather, they express a second sense or esoteric meaning: an under-language.” Comics artist Alan Moore coined the term “under-language” in comics as “neither the ‘visuals’ nor the ‘verbals,’ but a unique effect caused by a combination of the two.” Comic Book Rebels: Conversations with the Creators of the New Comics. Stanley Wiater and Stephen R. Bissette eds. (New York: Donald I. Fine, Inc., 1993), Interview with Alan Moore, pp. 162-63

Deena Larsen’s I’m Simply Saying uses sound to accompany each text’s movements, adding a different pace and emotion.

Jim Andrew’s Nio lets the reader play with sounds and letters, creating new meanings.

Secrets

clip_image008clip_image010

Elit writers are a tricky bunch. Some use invisible links so that the reader has to hunt for the next doorway into the text. Some hide text in the html coding of a web page. Some hide nodes so that readers can only find them if the readers are “in the know” or work very hard. These secret nodes tantalize the reader, providing more interest in the piece. Elit writers are just working within a general trend. DVDs often provide “easter eggs”—those hidden little extra bits. Video games only reveal secrets to players who have reached a certain level and attained enlightenment. Movies make a big deal of not giving away the central secret (for example, The Crying Game or the Sixth Sense).

Stuart Moulthrop relates that a reader informed him of an easter egg in “Pax,” and confesses that he had no clear memory of including it “proving Ambrose Bierce was wrong about secrets ‘two can keep a secret, if one of them is dead.’”

You can find secret parts of Deena Larsen’s I’m Simply Saying by poking around the corners of the main text.

One of the secret parts adds “secrets lie in lily cool faces, in rose warm blood, in orchid dry bruises, punctured by the realities of fast cars and faster modems.”

For more information: Deena Larsen’s webshelf lists electronic literature organized by the time it takes to read that work (from simple to complex).

Electronic Literature Organization and click on Directory for a comprehensive list of electronic works.

→ 2 CommentsCategories: Deena Larsen · Writers Conference

The English Department and Beyond: the UND Writers Conference

March 4, 2010 · 4 Comments

Teaching Thursday has invited Crystal Alberts and Deena Larsen, a world renown “hypertext / electronic literature / new media / electronic expression addict” to discuss how to use the University of North Dakota’s Writers Conference in classes across the UND Campus.  Over the next week, we will roll out a series of posts on lesson planning the Writers Conference.  So check back regularly because for the next couple of weeks, Teaching Thursday isn’t just for Thursday’s anymore.

Crystal Alberts, Department of English, University of North Dakota 

In 1970, Professor John Little, a member of the English Department, had an idea: he wanted to bring some of his friends to University of North Dakota for a “Southern Writers Conference on the Arts.” He hoped to create an opportunity for a rigorous exploration of literature, as well as provided a forum for a local and regional conversation about the arts as tied to our everyday lives. In order to achieve this goal, all events were (and continue to be) free and open to the public. His experiment was a success, and so he decided to try it again in 1971. Forty-one years later, the UND Writers Conference has become an institutional tradition, one that has a national reputation for being a unique and engaging experience for authors and audience alike.

At one point in time, at least in the English department, most if not all classes were cancelled during the Conference, and students were instructed to attend as many events as they could. The idea being that whatever one’s major or specialty, EVERYONE could learn something from the visiting authors. Considering that, over the years, approximately 269 authors have graced the halls of UND, including four Nobel laureates, twenty-seven (Art Spiegelman makes twenty-eight) Pulitzer Prize winners, Oscar recipients, and numerous MacArthur Geniuses, this assumption seems quite valid. In fact, talking to people around town and UND alumni, it seems that everyone has a story to share, ranging from “I had dinner with Truman Capote” to “when I was a student, I never missed a Conference,” to “it’s one of the best things about having gone to school at UND.”

However, something seems to have changed. Canceling classes during the Conference is now the exception, not the rule, even in the English Department. Am I advocating that every department on campus cancel classes and make attending the UND Writers Conference mandatory? While a part of me says, “well, actually, yes,” I realize that this isn’t practical or fair. We all have a large amount of material to teach in a short period of time, and so I understand when faculty members are not able to give up class time for the Conference. But, what I ask is that faculty members be willing to consider how the UND Writers Conference might enhance or intersect with their fields.

The UND Writers Conference is committed to fostering interdisciplinary discussion and each year selects a different theme to further that goal, such as “Art & Science” (2003), “The Use of History” (1999), “International Writers” (1982), and this year’s topic “Mind the Gap: Print, New Media, Art.” For example, in 2003, Dr. Rafael Campo, who practices internal medicine at Harvard Medical School, joined Dr. Devra Davis, professor of epidemiology and part of a Nobel prize winning team for her work on the Panel on Climate Change (shared with Al Gore, among others), so that the community could discuss poetry and writing; hence, Art AND Science. Meanwhile, this year’s conference includes graphic artists, a film director, a “new music” group, and professors of computer science whose work uses 3D virtual environments. As such, historically, the intellectual content of UND Writers Conference goes beyond the English department and includes, among others, the School of Medicine, Computer Science, Geology, Biology, Music, as well as Art & Design.

The question becomes “how could I include the Writers Conference in my class?” Well, here are some options:

1. Announce the scheduled events in class and encourage students to attend.

The schedule is available at http://www.undwritersconference.org/wc-schedule.htm.

2. Incorporate readings by visiting authors into your course schedule.

The UND Writers Conference generally knows which authors will be participating before the start of spring semester, giving instructors time to incorporate them into classes. However, sometimes the current year’s writers don’t seem to be a good fit, but that doesn’t mean that faculty members couldn’t include past participants in their classrooms, because what many do not know is that, since 1974, Conference events have been recorded, as such, past footage is available for on campus use.

3. Encourage students to check out the Cecelia Condit exhibit at the North Dakota Museum of Art.

While Gregory Corso (part of the Beat Generation) lamented our lack of an art museum at the 5th Annual UND Writers Conference: “City Lights in North Dakota” in 1974, we most certainly have an art museum now. And, this year’s conference has once again been able to collaborate with the North Dakota Museum of Art. Specifically, Cecelia Condit will not only participate in the 41st nnual UND Writers Conference, but her work will also be on display at the NDMOA from now through the conference. The staff at the Museum is always happy to talk about what they have going on, and we should take advantage of their programming.

4. Offer extra credit to students for attending events.

This could be as simple as asking students to write a paragraph or two about their experiences. Alternatively, it could be a more directed prompt either specific to particular authors or how students think the Writers Conference event has (or hasn’t) enhanced their course of study. Or, one could use the extra credit options that Deena Larsen, one of this year’s visiting authors will provide over the course of the next couple weeks right here on Teaching Thursday.

That said, UND has a national (and international) reputation for a number of things. Generally speaking, at the top of that list are aviation/aerospace and hockey. Yet, many tend to forget “the literary festival on the prairie.” We shouldn’t, because, while we never know exactly what will happen at the UND Writers Conference, whatever it is will be a chance for all of us (faculty, staff, students, and community members) to be a part of history. And, really, don’t we all, at least some part of us, want that?

The 41st Annual UND Writers Conference “Mind the Gap: Print, New Media, Art” will take place from March 23-27, 2010. Most events are in the Memorial Union; all events are free and open to the public. For more information go to www.undwritersconference.org.

→ 4 CommentsCategories: Crystal Alberts · Writers Conference

The Recruiting Paradox: Recruiting and teaching a new generation of graduate students

February 25, 2010 · 2 Comments

Evan Nelson, Recruitment Specialist, The Graduate School, The University of North Dakota

In the past decade, the size of North Dakota’s graduate schools has nearly doubled. The phenomenon is hardly isolated: Nationwide, graduate education is growing and growing. It’s also—and this is important—growing. This blog has been doing a great job exploring how to teach these new graduate students; I thought I would offer a connected perspective to your conversation. Those students, after all, have been recruited to come to your classroom.

Likely, you have been asked to do some of that recruiting. Probably in the hallways, between classes, during office hours. You are the professor, with authority vested in you by tradition and title, and students look to you on how to choose a grad school, how to get into a grad school, how to fit into grad school. You’ve been asked to recommend your students to grad schools and you’ve been asked to recommend grad school to your students.

When I recruit prospective students, we meet on their home turf. Students come to a fair on their home campus. They may or may not know that we will be there. I am one of hundreds of universities, each university defined only by table covering, photographs, flyers and logos. Should I lose their attention, students are seconds away from their normal life. Or the students are at home, on their computers, and they come to our Web page. Our homepage is surrounded by the students’ desktop photos, the students’ favorite songs play in the shuffle. The University of North Dakota is only a URL, only a banner, only a name on a list.

What’s important to remember is that they are taking time from their day to be recruited. At one fair, a student said, “North Dakota? Okay, I’ll give you a minute.” (I think the student was actually being generous. How many marketers would love a full minute?) And here’s the trouble: whatever we tell them, in those first few moments, sets their expectations for an entire degree program. We get a minute, a chat, a handshake, to prepare them for at least a few years of school.

Most graduate students have little idea what graduate school is. Recently, I gave a presentation on the “Dos and Don’ts of Applying to Graduate School.” I asked how many students had parents, or older siblings, or anyone in their family who had been to college. Everyone raised their hands. I asked how many had a family history of graduate school. Only two hands stayed in the air. For many current students, graduate school is the strange place where professors are hatched; it is only slightly less secretive and slightly less cloaked in bizarre ritual than The Illuminati.

Of course, this is not actually what graduate school is. A graduate classroom—done well—is electric with contention and counter, bristling with chance; exhausting, challenging. Rewarding. It is filled with smart people grappling with things they don’t understand. And the best learning comes from that struggle. It gives students ownership of their own ideas, and it is the central tenet of student-centered pedagogy.

Many professors on this very blog have written about the importance of establishing these learning environments, in the brave new world of online classes or with the eternal concern of not becoming boring. What hasn’t been asked, as much, is how to prepare students to willingly enter into such an environment. Because as soon as they do, they are ours to do with as we please.

Yes, we are student-centered. But only inasmuch as we define ourselves as student-centered. Keep in mind that no matter how much we tell ourselves that we are offering an education conveniently, or in a student-friendly manner, or however else you choose to frame it – we write the rules. The student must abide by our parameters to get a degree. The student must follow our schedule. The student must set aside a significant chunk of their lives in order to earn that education.

There’s nothing wrong with this. At least, it seems to have been working fairly well these past millennia. (Socrates may have asked questions, but he grew impatient when students didn’t follow the line of inquiry the way he wanted them to.)

With that in mind, then, let’s compare recruiting and teaching:

When recruiting:

We ask for a few moments.

We communicate on their terms.

When teaching:

We demand long months (at least).

We demand they submit to our terms.

This paradox guides the decisions I make when I speak with prospective students. If I wasn’t fair to either side of it, I would be doing a disservice to the students and the school. If I did not let students know that grad school will be hard and challenging and worth every ounce of achievement precisely because it is hard and challenging, I wouldn’t prepare the students for what grad school is like. If I didn’t speak to what the students want to hear, allowing them to air their concerns and granting them the space to make a decision to apply, I would scare away the students that our university would do well to have.

What I try to do—what we all try to do—is find a balance. I play salesman: I tell students that the lifetime earning potential is more for people who hold graduate degrees, that yes, the career opportunities open up; Yes, you too can ride the forefront of an exciting field! I play sage: I tell them that without a personally-defined conviction for attending, the necessary difficulties of graduate education can knock a student off course. I play stern: I tell students that the application process is competitive; I tell them that they must meet the admission requirements. I play kind: I answer student questions one-by-one, taking time to address all the concerns they bring up in an email, a phone call, a fair visit.

Because most students know nothing else about the University of North Dakota other than what they get from me, or from our Web site, (or from your department’s site), I think that whichever way I choose to speak with them will be brought into their first semester. When recruiting, then, I stress how hard work outside of class leads to energetic exchanges in class, and I use it as a selling point. I tell students that grad school opens up numerous opportunities, which can be met only by their own ambition. In short, while recruiting, I try to teach students what grad school is.

I invite you to consider this when you speak to prospective graduate students. Remember that your prospective students probably don’t know what to expect when they ask you questions, or for advice, about graduate school. Remember that your answers might then set the expectations the students bring into your classrooms later on. (The same goes for the emails you don’t answer.) Remember, your students’ graduate education began long before you handed out your syllabus.

→ 2 CommentsCategories: Evan Nelson · Graduate Instruction

Online Teaching, the Panopticon, and the ‘Unequal Gaze’

February 18, 2010 · 1 Comment

Mick Beltz, Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of North Dakota

It is my intent to explore the relevance of Michel Foucault’s insights, on discipline and the panopticon, within the context of the online educational experience. Bill Caraher, in his recent posting, “The Panopticon and Online Teaching,” explored some of the possible ways to use the work of Michel Foucault as a tool for understanding the online experience. While there will be some overlap between his thoughts and mine, the specifics of our discussions point to different conclusions.

Many people, when presented with Foucault’s discussion of the disciplinary principles of the panopticon, tend to view this discussion in a negative manner. They tend to read this harsh language of prisons, internalization, and discipline with a mild horror. They see the panoptic gaze in a purely negative light and take steps to chastise any structures that reinforce that gaze. I do not intend to defend every example of the ‘unequal gaze’ as being beneficial; however, I do want to highlight some positive consequences of the panoptic nature of online educational environments.

One of the most powerful concepts within the discussion of the panopticon is that of the ‘unequal gaze.’ For Focault, the ‘unequal gaze’ is a structural relationship where two individuals have different power relationships in their ability to monitor and survey the other person. In the discussion of the panopticon, the prison guard has the ability to completely monitor the actions and behaviors of the prisoner. The prisoner, on the other hand, never has the ability to monitor the prison guard, unless the guard allows the prisoner to have access to this information. This uneven power relationship usually means that the prisoner never knows if they are being monitored; instead, since there is the constant possibility of being observed, the prisoner must always operate under the assumption that they are being monitored.

The result of this ‘unequal gaze,’ for Foucault, is a level of discipline that shapes the individual to better fit within modern society and workforces. Any time that an institution has the ability to constantly monitor and record the individuals within those institutions, and the individuals internalize the disciplinary principles, they end up with a ‘docile body.’ That is a body that is disciplined in such a way as to fit smoothly into a society.

It is almost uncanny how the current online education model mirrors the idealized disciplinary institution of the panopticon. The power relationship between student and instructor is magnified in online educational environments. Any given student in an online course, only has access to material presented by the instructor. A student sees what the instructor wants them to see, and nothing more. For many students, this may even mean that they do not know who else (if anyone) is also taking the course. If an instructor decides to not include any group work, a student may never know if there are other students in the course. This isolation has a powerful impact on the internalization of the disciplinary principles. In traditional face-to-face classroom environments, students have the opportunity to talk with other classmates outside of the classroom. Even if this does not happen, a student will likely receive subtle verbal and non-verbal cues indicating the understanding of concepts and ideas by other students during class time. This eliminates isolation. If a student does not understand a concept, they might be able to see that other students are in the same boat. Most online teaching environments are not structured to eliminate this sense of isolation. Instead, since any given student does not know for sure if anyone else is in the course, they each are left with the potential of feeling that they are the only ones that are confused or lost. This feeling of isolation is at the heart of the internalization that comes from the ‘unequal gaze.’

The level of internalization of disciplinary principles needs to be much higher for online educational environments than it does for traditional educational environments. One of the major selling points of online educational environments is that they can allow students to be freed from the standard confines of the course structure. This means that they are freed from attending lectures at preset times or from needing to be someplace specific to learn. The difficulty is that these structures that students are being freed from are not arbitrary; they serve valuable educational purposes. They ensure that students are receiving the necessary information on the subject matter. They ensure that students are spending a specific amount of time digesting that information. They ensure that students do not fall behind in the course. If we free students from the repressive disciplinary structures of the traditional classroom environment, how can we avoid the negatives those structures are designed to prevent? This is the question Foucault was concerned with: how can we eliminate the repressive disciplinary structures and still maintain the results we desire? This is the importance of internalization. The panoptic nature of online educational environments provides this. Instructors are presented with a vast array of information that tells them how often a student views material, how long they view it, whether they have skipped over sections, etc. Since this information is unequally distributed in the instructor’s favor, the instructor has a much stronger level of power (not including all of the other power relationship that come in all educational environments). This ‘unequal gaze’ coupled with the potential isolation allows online education to free the student from the repressive structures if they are able to successful internalize the disciplinary principles.

Foucault argues that the goal of the panopticon is to create the ‘docile body’ within the prison population. By this, he is arguing that we need to shape the body to be better prepared to be a productive member of the workforce. Those people who cannot control their bodily impulses would be disruptive to those who can control themselves. This focus on the body seems anachronistic to our modern understanding of the needs of the workforce. Modern pluralistic societies have been arguing for decades that the body is not relevant to success. Instead, it is the capabilities of the mind that are relevant. The panopticon that accompanies online education seems to embrace this belief in a way that does not occur in traditional classroom environments. Since both the student and the instructor are disembodied representation of ideas, the focus on the body is eliminated. The race, gender, social class, age, or able-bodiness of both the student and instructor are obscured. This reinforces the expectations within the modern workforce. We are disciplining students to see that the presentation of ideas is the only relevant standard, because students cannot use any physical features as an excuse for their performance in a course.

I believe that there is a second beneficial consequence to the panoptic nature of online educational environments. I have argued, so far, that the ‘unequal gaze’ creates isolation for students. This is not necessarily a negative thing. Since the student’s primary contact is with the instructor, this can be used to foster a feeling of a personal educational experience. Instead of being able to blend in with the crowd, online students have no ability to see the crowd they might blend in with. Whether it is real or not, students internalize the personalized interaction with the instructor. For the student, he or she is likely to feel a personal connection with the instructor, since that is the primary voice they hear in the class. But from the instructor’s perspective, each student is just one out of many students. This gives the perception of personalized attention, without being as capital intensive as private instruction.

→ 1 CommentCategories: Michael Beltz · Online Teaching · Technology

Howard Zinn and Teaching

February 11, 2010 · 3 Comments

Richard Kahn, Department of Educational Foundations and Research, University of North Dakota

This last January 27th saw the passing of the great critical historian and activist, Howard Zinn. Besides being the famed author of A People’s History of the United States (2003), he was importantly an outspoken anarchist intellectual over the last five decades who routinely sought to intervene into the pressing matters of the day. Zinn was also well known as a gifted and much beloved university teacher. Some of his noteworthy students include the writer Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman, the founder of the Children’s Defense Fund. But his work as an educator was hardly confined to the classroom on campus, and he is equally remembered for his service as an advisor to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during its heyday in the early 1960s, as well as a faculty member who often joined in support of students, colleagues, and staff whenever and wherever they faced institutional struggles.

His death, then, provides an opportunity to further reflect on the special qualities that he evoked as a teacher and which he brought to his craft. As someone who is trained in the philosophy and history of education, I would therefore like to offer a few brief comments on Zinn-the-educator here in this blog as a rejoinder to its ongoing conversation about the nature of what constitutes good and bad pedagogy in higher education today.

Zinn was a paradigmatic example for why great teachers should not be slavishly devoted to that which is marketed as pedagogical “best practice” in any given moment or situation. Rather he showed how, in a manner echoed by Parker Palmer, the author of The Courage to Teach (2007), great teachers should seek to enter with their students into a “community of truth” centered around the teacher’s passionate commitment to maintaining self-integrity. Here, the point is not to be (for reasons of either ideology or pragmatics) student-centered or teacher-centered, group inquiry-oriented or lecture-based, in favor of infusing technology or not, etc. None of these are ends in themselves for the educator who seeks to teach in and with a community of truth. Instead, from a perspective such as Zinn’s, our job as educators is to invite our classes into the rigorous pursuit and production of the living history of ideas—the truth of our unfolding human process in all of its registers. In this way, we thus also model for students how to begin naming and navigating the various socio-cultural forces coalescing around them, to articulate and argue for their own perspectives on society and its institutions, and so in good faith become democratic citizens capable of exerting their own civic leadership.

In other words, according to Zinn the last thing we should aim at in our pedagogy is to “objectively” deposit content knowledge into students’ minds—what the critical educator Paulo Freire termed “banking pedagogy” in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2001). To begin with, Zinn denied that such was even possible. For students, like all people, are actively constructing their reality and placing new experience in the contexts of how they have come to understand and identify with their world. Thus, to teach in this way is to deny the human agency that students bring to the pedagogical encounter. Further, the zone of university teaching does not take place in a void, but is the complex ecological space constructed out of the myriad histories of the people inhabiting the campus, the institution’s own policy and disciplinary histories, the regional history in which a college is situated, the political history of the nation, and the social history of the planet (i.e., globalization). Thus, there is no value-free perspective from which to impart objective knowledge, but only the dynamic landscape that is the actively evolving history of ideas as articulated by various groups occupying a highly diverse array of social locations. To Zinn, the role of the teacher was to be frank and open about how one’s pedagogy related to these groups—which side was it on? Not to indoctrinate or propagandize, but to celebrate the democratic nature of education and help students to recognize that the true object of teaching was not content knowledge but the birth of their own civic subjectivity.

For this reason, I include the following long quotation from Howard Zinn’s book Failure to Quit (2002) in every one of my syllabi under the “Format, Procedure, Requirements” section:

This is not an “objective” course. I will not lie to you, or conceal information from you because it is embarrassing to my beliefs. But I am not a “neutral” teacher. I have a point of view about war, about racial and sexual inequality, about economic injustice—and this point of view will affect my choice of subject, and the way I discuss it. I ask you to listen to my point of view, but I don’t expect you to adopt it. You have a right to argue with me about anything, because, on the truly important issues of human life there are no “experts.” I will express myself strongly, as honestly as I can, and I expect you to do the same. I am not your only source of information, of ideas. Points of view different from mine are all around, in the library, in the press. Read as much as you can. All I ask is that you examine my information, my ideas and make up your own mind.

Not being neutral means we serve the democratic nature of education and strengthen the community of the university and all it serves. To my mind, as to Zinn’s, this not being neutral hardly equates to an opinion free for all, however. Instead, it is a demand that we use our disciplinary teaching to foster communities of truth that are learning to read and intervene into the dehumanizing and anti-democratic aspects of our civic life.

In closing, I would like to give this blog’s readers a chance to reflect on how Zinn himself was reading our civic and educational challenge only a few days prior to his demise. In a letter to his friend, the critical educator Henry Giroux, Zinn wrote, “Henry, we are in a situation where mild rebuke, even critiques we consider ‘radical’ are not sufficient. (Frederick Douglass‘ speech on the Fourth of July in 1852, thunderously angry, comes close to what is needed). Raising the temperature of our language, our indignation, is…what is needed.”

If you are a teacher in higher education, are you raising your voice and being heard by your students (or potential students) in this way—using your knowledge and position to teach against the clear and present dangers of our present moment in history? If not, is this because you disagree with Zinn’s conclusion? Let me suggest, then, that his truth is not so easily dismissed. For, if I wanted to know the specifics of quantum mechanics, I would undoubtedly benefit from listening to a theoretical physicist specializing in quantum theory, no? Or, if I wanted to understand something of the human body, might I not give ear to someone more expert than I in general medicine? In this same way, Zinn was an expert in democratic pedagogy and if we are interested in a world that values the power of people, their freedom, their ideas, desires, and needs, then we do such a world a great disservice if we banish those voices and needs every time we enter our classroom.

But maybe you agree with Zinn and, all the same, still find your teacherly voice more silent than he would recommend on the crucial social and culture issues that serve as the broader context for your work? Of course, if education is always political (and it is) and if we teach in institutions in which power is not equally distributed (and we do), then we must always be tactical and strategic in our speech. I, for one, would never hastily criticize a colleague for failing to appear on the front line of any campus or community issue. To learn to articulate demands is powerful, but for this very reason it can entail serious resistance and significant consequences for those who chose to engage in democratizing the curriculum-at-large.

And yet, there was someone like Howard Zinn who engaged in this behavior through a storied academic career for the large majority of his 87 years on earth! Nor was he ever alone in his pursuits. Therefore, we must take care as teachers to talk back—at least occasionally—to the potential oppressor in our heads, the “conscience” who too often demands our quiet complacency and counsels an undercurrent of fear rather than valor in our faculty work. Are there campus concerns that you now have which you feel occupy too low an amplitude in the university’s common discourse? You need not take up a bullhorn (though you may) in order to better represent them. Instead, turn to them in your teaching. Bring your students into dialogue with them, and so strive to become the kind of great educator who is capable of organizing a community of truth founded upon a pedagogy of integrity.

→ 3 CommentsCategories: Howard Zinn · Richard Kahn · Teaching

Teaching at State Schools: Two Case Studies

February 4, 2010 · 1 Comment

This week, Teaching Thursday is joined by a guest blogger, Dallas Deforest.  He offers two case studies that compare his experiences teaching at two different universities in Ohio. As the number of adjunct faculty increase across the country, more and more faculty will share Dallas’ experience of teaching at multiple universities simultaneous. While this undoubtedly presents simply technical challenges (two different types of students, different academic calendars, different faculty and student expectations), as Dallas’ post notes, this will also present opportunities to deal with larger pedagogical and theoretical issues that teaching at one place for many years will often obscure.

Dallas DeForest, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, Ohio State University

Last fall I was an adjunct instructor at Wright State University in Dayton, OH, in the Classics department. I taught one section of their Greco-Roman Civilization course to approximately 75 students. It was a welcome change for me, since I had taught only Western Civilization I in the history department at Ohio State University previously. Western Civ.—an absurdly structured and outdated course in 21st century academia—can grow tiresome fairly fast, so I welcomed the opportunity to teach a more focused course in my field of “expertise.” The experience was, on the whole, a good one. Many of my students were hard-working and interested in the subject matter, and I was able to prep and deliver a course that I hope to have the opportunity to teach in the future.

In many ways, WSU and OSU are similar. Both are public institutions; both offer graduate degree programs (WSU mainly masters level with a few Ph.D. programs; OSU the whole gamut); both have study abroad and honors programs; both have a litany of social groups and extracurricular activities for the students; both have good research libraries (Dunbar and Thompson); both have comparable in-state tuition rates; and both draw their students overwhelmingly from Ohio.

But there are important differences, too, especially in admissions policies and the student body (and its size: c. 12,800 vs. c. 40,200 undergraduates). WSU maintains an open admissions policy for all who meet a series of minimum requirements. For Ohio residents a 2.0 GPA, 18 ACT composite or 840 SAT critical reading and mathematics score and a college preparatory curriculum are necessary; for non-Ohio residents a 2.5 GPA, 20 ACT composite or 960 SAT critical reading and mathematics score and a college preparatory curriculum are required. OSU uses a closed admissions policy. The academic backgrounds of the student bodies are also markedly different:

Standardized Tests:

Average, middle 50%:       WSU          OSU

SAT math:                        430-570     590-680

SAT critical reading:         440-550     540-650

SAT writing:                     N/A           540-640

ACT:                                 18-24         25-30

High School Class Standing: WSU      OSU

Top 10%:                           14%           53%

Top 25%:                           35%           89%

Top 50%:                           65%           99%

Yet perhaps the most glaring difference comes in freshmen retention rates and overall graduation rates:

                                         WSU        OSU

Freshmen retention rate: 70%          92%

% graduating in 4 years:    18%          51%

In 5 years:                         37%          74%

In 6 years:                         41%          75%

(data may be found here, here, here and here.)

For my classes at Ohio State it has been fairly easy to judge the abilities and limits of my students, and I’ve framed my course content appropriately around these (as I see it). The student body is relatively uniform in terms of its academic background, which is due, in part at least, to the admissions policy. I typically have a couple of standouts in my classes, a couple of poor performers, while the majority consists of average B-level students. Most are full-time students, aged 18-22.

Planning and executing my course at Wright State was more challenging, for several reasons (though the faculty at WSU were very helpful from the start and I structured my course based on their recommendations—reducing my assigned readings and eliminating the major writing assignment I have in place at OSU). First, there are the differences in academic skills and backgrounds noted above. WSU also has a much higher part-time student population compared to OSU (16% to .08%) and many of these students are adult learners; many students in my class were going to school part-time (or full-time) while maintaining full-time jobs, for example. Several approached me at the beginning of the quarter to tell me that, because of work, they would have to miss 40-60% of the course altogether. No such thing has ever occurred during my 6 years of teaching at OSU, where there are few part-time students and the adult learners are, generally, taking courses for fun after retirement. Many more missed between 25-30% of class because of time conflicts with work or family. It is difficult for me to gauge the academic level of this group of students because they missed so much class time, but they didn’t generally do very well in the course, despite my efforts to help them through it.

I also had some students who seemed wholly unprepared for college course work. Most of these were standard college freshmen, aged 18 or 19, who were the products of poor primary and secondary schools systems (my theory, at least). Some in this group attended class only sporadically, even skipping exams and quizzes, while insisting upon maintaining their enrollment in the course (often vociferously via email); others attended regularly and worked hard. This lower tier of students had tremendous trouble digesting concepts, remembering basic factual information and comprehending the reading assignments. I spent many of my office hours with those who attended regularly, working slowly through the reading assignments and course material. But nothing in my graduate education had prepared me to teach (basic) literacy skills effectively (which is, sadly, what was often needed in these cases). My sister-in-law, who has a Masters in education with a focus in literacy studies certainly could have done a better job. Yet there I was, and suddenly this was a part of my job, for which I was neither qualified nor prepared. This group of students struggled throughout the course, though the ones who attended all passed. Again, this isn’t something I’ve encountered at OSU.

Yet alongside these students, which represented approximately 1/3 of my class, were those who compared well to an OSU class: average B-level students, and also some very elite students, who could excel, in my opinion, in just about any college setting. The latter were presumably recipients of WSU’s merit-based academic awards, which by the numbers demonstrate that these students are at or above average when compared to OSU students.

My experience at Wright State left me with a lot to think about. First, although we tend to think of state schools as a monolithic category of sorts arrayed against private schools, this is a false understanding of the college system. State schools vary widely in nearly every conceivable academic category and in the composition of their student bodies (something which is probably obvious to many, but still isn’t fully reflected in our discussions of the academic system). Teaching at one could be markedly different than teaching at another and could require an entirely different skill set. My WSU class ran the whole gamut: elite recipients of merit-based awards all the way down to students with minimal literacy skills—a range that simply isn’t present at OSU. How does one teach effectively to such a group? How does one make sure the course material is sufficiently rigorous and meaningful for the elite students but also manageable for the those toward the bottom of the class academically (esp. for those who are trying really hard but were the products of poor primary and secondary schools systems)? I attempted to do this by varying the level of my lecture material, mixing readings and making some optional, and providing numerous options for students to answer on my exams. But I’m not sure this really worked at all, nor am I certain what I could have done differently, which forced me to think about the implications of open admissions policies, academia’s response to the needs of adult learners and whether college teachers can (reasonably) be expected to offer the remedial instruction some students require when they arrive on campus. Can we realistically be expected to be both “Professors,” with a capital P, and basic literacy instructors, making up for the failures of the secondary school system? Are open admissions policies related at all to poor graduation rates? Is course content diluted to an unacceptable degree as a result of this? As the need for adult retraining increases in a 21st century knowledge-based economy, are the nation’s universities in a position to meet this demand? I don’t have the answers to any of these questions, but I’d love to hear what people think about them.

→ 1 CommentCategories: Dallas Deforest · Teaching Experiences

Faculty, Teaching Technologies, and the University of North Dakota

February 1, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Lori Swinney, Director of the Center for Instructional and Learning Technologices (CILT), University of North Dakota

In my role as the director of the Center for Instructional & Learning Technologies (CILT) at the University of North Dakota I have the privilege to work with an incredible team of professionals whose primary focus is to help others learn how to use technology. Our mission is “to collaborate with the University community to provide support for students, faculty and staff in the pursuit of innovation and excellence in teaching and learning with technology”. Our webpage, listing the services we offer is located at http://cilt.und.edu.

Initially, about 15 years ago, our Center was established to support faculty integrating technology into teaching and learning. We created a warm and safe environment to introduce faculty into the new world of teaching with technology. The thought of changing the way one taught a course after 20 years of teaching was a little scary for some faculty and like falling off a cliff without a net for others. Our goal at CILT was to introduce little changes, make it fun, and, to use an old adage, “teach the faculty how to fish”. We didn’t do the work for them, we showed them how by teaching workshops, hosting forums, and celebrating successes by showcasing faculty examples.

It worked and UND started the journey into a new world of teaching and learning with technology. We have seen many changes over the past decade. In classrooms, the old desk in the front went away and was replaced by a Smart Teaching Station and the classroom became “smart”. Overhead projectors got dusty because they were replaced by digital projectors mounted on the ceiling. Chalkboards became interactive whiteboards so instructor notes and diagrams could be saved digitally and sent to the students.

We also saw changes in students. Students are bringing laptops, PDAs, smart phones and netbooks to class. They want to get their course information online; syllabus, handouts, faculty contact information, and most important – grades. They want help with how to use the technology, how to plug in their headset, what laptop to buy, how to order an electronic textbook, and how to post their assignments in the Learning Management System (LMS).

Have these changes affected the way faculty design, develop, teach and assess their courses and how our Center supports teaching and learning at UND? Higher Education, as an institution, has always moved very slowly. Technology seems to have sped things up. The New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative have collaborated since 2004 to publish the annual Horizon Report. The report describes the top six emerging technologies thought to have a significant impact on teaching and learning. Three of the key trends noted in this year’s Horizon Report 2010; mobile computing, open content and electronic books when looked at together point towards significant changes in how faculty teach. Students want to bring their electronic devices to class (virtually or face-to-face) and read their textbooks online. Faculty can share their teaching materials with colleagues and use, with permission, others’ content in their courses – open content. What a change from 10-15 years ago when it was difficult to even get an instructor to share an electronic copy of the syllabus.

Not all faculty are embracing these changes. There are so many unique and diverse needs that vary by the discipline, faculty, and student. What works for an instructor teaching political science may not work for his colleague in the same department. The same applies to the students. The changes have affected everyone, some adjust quickly, some struggle, and some will not change. I recently received a call from a new parent inquiring whether his daughter will be able to use electronic textbooks for her courses. He was concerned about the weight of carrying all of the books around campus. When checking with her instructors I found a mixture; electronic texts, hard cover books, handouts and library articles, some traditionalists and some innovators.

An example of how technology can help UND meet the changing needs of students is the explosion of online courses. Students want the flexibility to take classes without having to come to a classroom or even to campus. We have seen a significant increase in the number of online courses offered and student enrollments in the past two years. Some faculty embrace these changes and some believe the traditional face-to-face model of teaching is the only way their course can be taught. CILT’s role is to work with faculty to help develop the course in a different way so that it can be taught online. We have staff with degrees in Instructional Design & Technology who partner with the faculty to create online courses. Faculty report after going through the process of designing and teaching their first online course, they find themselves changing their traditional course by adding some components from the online section.

Technology has become such an essential tool in the teaching and learning process both inside and outside of the classroom. CILT recognized the critical need to provide support for more than just the faculty and has recently expanded its services to include students and staff. We have also increased our support hours into the evening and on weekends. We, in higher education, are moving into the 24/7 access and availability arena that the consumer market already provides for its customers. This is one of the bigger challenges I see for CILT. How do we provide the appropriate level of support that is needed for faculty and students? Is it more time, 24/7? Is it more staff, no waiting time? What is appropriate for us to do for the student or faculty, do we teach them to fish or do we fish for them? Many of the support calls we receive ask us to “just do it for me”, is this right? How do we keep up with the new technologies and make current recommendations? Our challenge is to provide the right amount of support and incorporate the most appropriate technology tools so that both students and faculty can focus on the teaching and learning, not on the technology.

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Lori Swinney · Technology