I’m just back from a committee meeting at which the subject of grades and grade distributions came up, and it became clear to me that academics (even at the same institution, even in the same field) have wildly different philosophies about just what grades ought to mean.
Category Archives: Communication
Is solving the absenteeism/attendance issue really a matter of framing?
After I posted on the issue twice and Julie posted on it once (although she might blog further on it), I got a brainwave about what’s at the core of our frustration with our students who ditch lots of classes.
At bottom, it’s our feeling that we are not succeeding in our attempts to communicate with them — about why being in class can help them succeed in a course, about the value that course could have beyond filling a necessary requirement for graduation, about the larger value a college education could have in their lives. We’re trying to get all this across, but sometimes we wonder whether we’re the grown-ups in a Charlie Brown special; to the kids, what we’re saying might as well be “WAH-WAH WAH WAH WAH” (as played by a trombone).
And perhaps the reason our attempts at communicating with our students are failing is that we are not framing these attempts as well as we could.
Hierarchy, meritocracy, the blogosphere, and the real world.
Those who follow the political blogs more closely than I do were probably aware eons ago that some of the A-list political bloggers significantly trimmed their blogrolls (while dubbing it, strangely enough, a blogroll “amnesty”). Others, like Terrance at the Republic of T (who is as close to the Platonic form of Serious and Engaging Blogger as any blogger of whom I’m aware), took note of this just recently, with a thougtful post about the interactions of the various “tiers” of the blogosphere and the ways hierarchies get entrenched. Chris Clarke and Pam Spaulding also wrote insightfully about this (and I find it reassuring that these smart and informed people are just now examining an issue which a lot of people might deem “so yesterday”).
Anyway, the reason I want to weigh in on the great blogroll purge is that I see a connection to issues that Zuska raised recently about the community — and hierarchies — within the scientific world.
Cyberspeech and cybersilence: thoughts on the Kathy Sierra matter.
In case you somehow missed it: tech writer and blogger Kathy Sierra cancelled public appearances after receiving death threats. In addition to the death threats, she called attention to some posts about her that were threatening in tone (though probably falling short of actual threats) and definitely mean on now-defunct sites set up by other A-list tech bloggers. Since blogging about this, SIerra has received more threats. A number of bloggers think Sierra has smeared the people who ran the now-defunct websites by not drawing a clear enough distinction between the death threats (which they did not make) and whatever their involvement might have been with the posts (not comments) on the now-defunct sites. There are about a gazillion posts you could read on this whole firestorm (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, to give just a sampling).
I had never heard of Kathy Sierra before this firestorm struck, but for the last few days I’ve been thinking a lot about issues around online interaction and communication. These thoughts are running in lots of different directions, so rather than try to hammer them into a coherent “manifesto”, I’ll just lay them out and let you tell me how they fit together.
Media consumption inventory.
Over at BlogHer, Marianne Richmond has tagged everyone with a meme on personal media consumption. Given that I’ve already self-identified as a Luddite, I figured a little self-examination of my media habits might be worthwhile.
Learning to write like a scientist: factors worth noting.
I’m following up on yesterday’s post on where scientists learn how to write (and please, keep those comments coming).
First, Chad Orzel has a nice post about how he learned to write like a scientist. It involves torturing drafts on the rack, and you owe it to yourself to read it.
Second, I’ll be putting up a post tonight about the best scientific writing assignment ever, at least in my graduate school experience. It’s one more professors teaching graduate students might consider adapting.
In the meantime, I want to throw out a set of factors that probably make a difference in the process of helping scientists learn to write. (Use the comments to add factors I’ve forgotten.)
Where do scientists learn to write?
During my office hours today, a student asked me whether, when I was a chemistry student, the people teaching me chemistry also took steps to teach me how to write. (The student’s experience, in an undergraduate major in a scientific field I won’t name here, was that the writing intesive course did nothing significant to teach good writing, and the assignments did very little to improve students’ writing.)
It’s such a good question, I’m going to repackage it as a set of questions to the scientists, scientists-in-training, and educators of scientists:
Scientists and non-scientists need to talk.
In a guest-post at Asymptotia, Sabine Hossenfelder suggests some really good reasons for scientists to communicate with non-scientists — and not just to say, “Give us more research funding and we’ll give you an even smaller iPod.” She really gets to the heart of what’s at stake:
Two NYT stories worth a look.
Some readers have called to my attention a pair of recent stories from the New York Times that you may find interesting.
First, Audrey noted another dispatch on the eternal struggle over how math ought to be taught:
Friday Sprog Blogging: the power of words and the psychology of groups.
This is not a “cute” story. It’s an infuriating story about a school climate gone mad. And, although I suspect an organizational psychologist could give a nuanced analysis of the situation, that’s not my area of expertise, so I’m just going to tell the story.
Elder offspring was sent to the Vice Principal’s office yesterday. When the office called Dr. Free-Ride’s better half about the incident, the crime they reported was “saying the B-word”.
I should say right now, if you’re in earshot of an elementary or secondary school as you’re reading this post, please don’t read it out loud! I would hate to be responsible for your incarceration in the Vice Principal’s office.
So, Dr. Free-Ride’s better half actually had to go to the Vice Principal’s office yesterday, largely because elder offspring was hysterical and unable to put together a coherent sentence to convey the kid’s-eye account of the incident. Needless to say, the Vice Principal interpreted this as elder offspring “knowing that was a very bad thing to say”. The Principal, thankfully, was much less willing to convict on such flimsy evidence. Dr. Free-Ride’s better half was able to calm elder offspring sufficiently to return to class. After school, a more composed elder offspring was able to communicate these details: