Category Archives: Personal

Things observed while sitting in on colleagues’ classes.

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One of our professional duties in my department is sitting in on colleagues’ classes and writing peer-reviews of their teaching. This is almost always a useful activity, and I usually learn a teaching trick or two that I might be able to use in my own classes.

This semester, though, while sitting in on these classes, I’ve seen student behavior that, if not new, seems to have crossed a threshold where it is more prevalent and undisguised than I’ve seen before.

Those students who, from the front of the classroom, look all industrious on their laptops? Were playing games on Facebook, checking their friends’ online photo albums, posting messages on what looked to be gaming discussion boards, checking TV listings (and possibly setting their DVRs remotely), buying shoes, scoping out concert tickets, watching a kung fu movie (with the sound muted), and checking in on online discussions for other classes. The one student who was using her laptop during lecture to complete peer reviews of classmates’ papers (for another class) seemed like the model of diligence.

All of this, I should note, was on the quarter of the laptops in the classroom that I could easily see from my seat near the edge of the classroom. I cannot report with any authority on what was happening on the other 75% of the computers that were in use. Maybe someone was actually using one of them to take notes on the lecture.

I will confess to some relief that none of the screens in my line of sight were being used to view pornography. Perhaps this means that students are not quite as brazen as they might be in the classroom. Or maybe a 7:30 am class is just too early for porn.

Anyway, my problem now is returning to my own classes, where a fair number of laptops are fired up every week, with the full confidence that all of those are being used to take notes, consult the course website, and so forth. If there were a button at the front of the room that could block wifi reception in the classroom, it would be pretty tempting to use it.

Blog note: resurfacing.

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You will have noticed (if you haven’t given up on me altogether) that things have been very quiet here.

I have been slogging through the toughest semester of my academic life. I’m including in this consideration all 26 of the years I was a student and each and every one of my pre-tenure freak-out semesters here. When people ask how I’m doing, I’ve taken to replying that my job is trying to kill me, and I’m only joking a little when I say it (because I don’t believe that my job itself actually has intentions).

I’m hopeful that things will get better, but honestly, it’s hard to know. The increased workload doesn’t show much sign of receding (because, you know, the state of California is still broke, so public employees should just be thrilled to have jobs rather than agitating for more resources, or for job demands that might allow them to sleep occasionally or spend a weekend day with their kids).

What I do know is that cutting out the blogging to try to stay on top of the work is not working for me. It feels like, for me, the blogging is a crucial mechanism for reflection. Without it, I feel like I don’t have a sense of what I’m really accomplishing, or of why it matters, or of who I am as I’m hurtling though it. I feel stuck in my head in a tangle of chaos, and that’s not making my stupid workload any easier to live through.

All of which is to say, I do not know when my blogging will “get back to normal” as far as the longer pieces on science and ethics that I used to write before work ate my brain, but I will be writing something here regularly, because it’s the only way I know to survive this.

Scary repost: Neighbor kids, ergot, and zombies.

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A conversation that happened just over two years ago as my better half was clearing plates from the kitchen table and I was cooking something.

Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: Hey, I thought our kids like zucchini bread.

Dr. Free-Ride: They do. That piece was [the kid across the street’s] — always gladly accepts a snack, never has more than a few bites.

Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: Huh.

Dr. Free-Ride: I think that’s why when our kids are over there, there are so many snacks. If you have a kid who only eats a little at a time, you have to feed continuously.

Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: Why don’t our kids eat like birds?

Dr. Free-Ride: I’m going to guess that genetics have something to do with it. But their metabolic reserves will carry them through when zombies have disrupted Trader Joe’s supply chain.

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Repost: The ethics of snail eradication.

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Since I recently reposted an explanation of one method for dispatching snails and slugs, it seems only fair that I also repost my discussion of whether it’s ethical for me to be killing the snails in my garden to begin with.

In the comments of one of my snail eradication posts, Emily asks some important questions:

I’m curious about how exactly you reason the snail-killing out ethically alongside the vegetarianism. Does the fact that there’s simply no other workable way to deal with the pests mean the benefits of killing them outweigh the ethical problems? Does the fact that they’re molluscs make a big difference? Would you kill mice if they were pests in your house? If you wanted to eat snails, would you? Or maybe the not-wanting-to-kill-animals thing is a relatively small factor in your vegetarianism?

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Video dispatch from the mouth of the cave of grading: why do we write the essay before the lecture?

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Another week, another stack of essays to collect (and read, and comment upon). This week, though, a student actually asked the question in class that I imagine many ask themselves: why are they writing essays on material before I’ve lectured on it, rather than after?

Because I’m too tired to type, I take on that question in a brief video dispatch.

As the new-ish semester kicks her butt, your blogger surfaces for a moment.

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Verily, the new semester is kicking my butt.

Lots of students means lots of name-face correlations to memorize (something I’m still working on), and, of course, lots of papers to grade.

A departmental edict against making more photocopies than are absolutely necessary means I need to spend extra time converting what once would have been handouts into PDFs and web pages, and making sure the links to them actually work. (Also, I need to convince the students for the Logic and Critical Reasoning course to actually bring copies, be they hard or soft, of the homework questions with them to our class meetings.)

It probably doesn’t help that soccer coaching is on my plate and that my team plays weeknight games as well as really-early-Saturday-morning games. (It does help that my team seems to have embraced teamwork from the get-go, so huzzah for that.)

As I’m treading water over here, a couple of things I’m pondering:

  • Sure, I’m saving trees by not duplicating and distributing full syllabi, detailed descriptions of assignments, and such. Probably without all those handouts more students are actually accessing the course websites (where I have always mounted electronic versions of the handouts). However, now I’m wondering whether the barrage of handouts at the first class meeting actually helped to scare away people who didn’t really want to take my class, thus freeing up spaces for the scores of people who were telling me that they were desperate to add it — not just because it filled a requirement for graduation, but because the subject matter really speaks to them.*
  • For a long time, I have graded student work in ink that is not red whenever possible, on account of gestures some of my pedagogical mentors have made to research suggesting that red ink on work they are getting back conveys to students OMG I did it WRONG! and am STOOPID!. This is not, as you might guess, a mindset that is conducive to learning more stuff. However, now I’m starting to wonder if we may be training a new generation of students to recoil from comments written in purple ink.

Things have to settle down soon. Right?

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* I have my suspicions that the extent to which any of my courses “speaks to” people who want to add it might be contingent on how badly they need it to graduate, how swiftly their planned graduation date is approaching, and how nicely my course fits in their schedule. Not that I’m cynical or anything.

The future of higher education, according to the rumor mill.

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I’m getting this third-hand, and I’m always cautious about predictions of future events, but here’s someone’s vision of higher education yet-to-come:

  1. Professors will totally need to incorporate online elements, especially social media elements, into their courses if they are to have a prayer of engaging their students.
  2. They will also need to get students to accept the idea that since the jobs are being outsourced to other countries, they (the students) will need to be ready to move to those countries. (No word on whether students are to be prepared for the prevailing wages in those countries, or on whether those countries are likely to welcome our students as job-seeking immigrants.)
  3. The end of new tenure track faculty.

Excuse me, but I was promised a zombie apocalypse.

Start-of-semester paradox.

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Regular readers of this blog may recall that the California State University system, of which my fair campus is a part, is in the throes of a budgetpocalypse. The state of California just can’t put up the money it used to put up to support the educational mission we are charged to uphold, and one immediate strategy the system has taken to deal with dramatically reduced state contribution is to shrink our enrollments.

I recognize that this seems counterintuitive — you’d think more enrolled students would mean more tuition dollars coming in, which would bean more money available to pay for stuff like instructors and electricity in the classrooms and so forth. However, even with steadily increasing “student fees” (our euphemism for tuition in a university system which was set up to be tuition-free), the amount of money the students are putting up comes nowhere near the actual costs of educating those students. The money from the state is essential to even approaching those costs, so when the money from the states is reduced, it means we can’t enroll as many students. (My understanding is that this has jacked up the demand at the community colleges significantly, but I haven’t seen actual numbers on this.)

Anyway, from a faculty-eye view, the immediate impact of slashed enrollments was a first week of classes during which … it didn’t quite feel like the first week of classes on campus. There was not a line of traffic several blocks long to get into the parking structure. The sidewalks in most parts of the campus were not so congested with new and returning students as to be practically unnavigable. It was not practically impossible to grab a quick bite at the main campus eatery in a 15 minute window before noon.

However, from within my classrooms, you’d get the impression that enrollments have skyrocketed. I have had many more people asking for add codes (and many more students sitting on the floor or standing through the first class meeting) than in any semester I can recall here. I’m still waiting to see what the official policy ruling will be on how many students I’m allowed to add (since going over enrollment targets can lead to punishment of departments that do so).

I guess I’ll try to appreciate how much less time it takes to park, even if I end up having to use the time I’ve saved (and more) grading a larger stack of student papers.

Start-of-semester mad dash.

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Well, summer sure ended quickly (although suddenly the weather is downright summery — thanks, irony!). Less than 48 hours from the beginning of classes, my to-do list looks something like this:

  • Update syllabus for the “Philosophy of Science” class I’ve taught for several semesters.
  • Update web pages for that “Philosophy of Science” class.
  • Set up materials in Desire2Learn* shells for the two sections of that “Philosophy of Science” class that I’m teaching this term.
  • Finish writing syllabus for the “Logic and Critical Reasoning” course I’m teaching for the first time this semester.
  • Create web pages for “Logic and Critical Reasoning”.
  • Set up materials in Desire2Learn shell for my section of “Logic and Critical Reasoning.”
  • Update my homepage (primarily to reflect/link to courses I’m teaching this term and to list my current office hours).
  • Find out what the heck my college’s official policy on add codes is this semester, the better to inform the throngs of people turning up wanting to add my courses what (if anything) I can do for them.
  • Verify that textbooks are actually available in the campus book store (and not mislabeled and/or mis-shelved).
  • Verify that necessary classroom equipment is functional in my classrooms.
  • For each of my courses, create 1-page handout giving overview of course requirements and URLs for detailed syllabi, assignments, etc.
  • Make offerings to the deity that controls department photocopier in order that I may successfully photocopy the 1-page handout for each of my courses.
  • Put in request for the courses I’d like to teach spring semester.
  • Try really, really hard to dodge any new committee assignments.
  • Brace self for inevitable unpleasantness of the details about what else needs to be cut this semester in light of the fact that the budget assumed a 10% increase in student fees** and that student fees actually only increased by 5%.***
  • Bring a sweatshirt to office, which seems at present to be a full 30 oF colder than the ambient temperature outside. (Bring thermometer to office, to track meat-locker-like temperatures in which it seems I’m expected to work.)

By the way, these are just the items requiring the most urgent attention — the full to-do list is much longer.

We’ll see what I can get done before the last minute has passed.
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*Desire2Learn is a course management system, like Blackboard or WebCT (which Blackboard bought and assimilated). My university adopted it because it seems to do better on accessibility issues (like making content easy to navigate for students with visual impairments with a screen reader).

**In the California State University system, of which my university is a part, “student fees” is the euphemism for tuition. Tuition is spoken of euphemistically because until the early 1990s there wasn’t any. Now there is, and it seems to increase substantially every term.

***That 5% increase, however, is enough to make life really hard for a lot of our students.

More on strategies to accomplish training.

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Earlier this week, I mentioned that I had powered through some online training courses that I needed to complete by the (rapidly approaching) beginning of my academic term. In that post, I voiced my worries about how well I’d be able to retain the material I took in (and, one hopes, absorbed to at least some extent) in one long sitting at my computer.

As it happens, I am spending today and tomorrow at full-day training sessions (about nine hours per day, including breaks) covering related material at much greater depth and breadth. Obviously, this affords me the opportunity to compare the two modes of content delivery.

One thing I’ve noticed is that I seem to have retained substantial chunks of the material presented in the online training. (Sure, retaining it for two days is maybe not a huge accomplishment, but these have been subtle details — and I’m pretty sure I have students who can forget material more rapidly than this once the quiz on the material is behind them.)

It’s possible, though, that my retention of that material will be better because I’m using it in this live training. I’ll really have no way to tell which bits of the overlapping material stick in my head because of the online training and which stick because of the live training since I’m doing both in rapid succession. (Too many variables!)

The live training has so far been more interactive during the presentation of material, with speakers taking questions and asking us questions. (They’ve also distributed clicker-like devices that we’ll be using during the presentations after lunch.) There haven’t been any quizzes on the material (yet), but there will be breakout groups in which our active participation is required.

We’ve also been presented with gigantic binders containing handouts with slides for each of the presentations (complete with space for our own notes), related articles, and extensive listings of additional resources (including online resources). These binders have been adding to my sense of actively engaging with the information rather than just having the information wash over me. Plus, my binder will now be my first stop if I need to look up a piece of information from this training, which I personally will find easier than digging through my Firefox bookmarks.

A disadvantage of this training is that it eats up two calendar days set far in advance by the trainers, in a particular location far enough from most of the participants’ home bases that they need to book lodging for a couple nights. As well, owing to the A/V needs of the presenters and the aforementioned gigantic binders, the cost per participant of the training session is significant.

Why, you might ask, am I doing both of these overlapping training programs in rapid succession?

Strictly speaking, the live training sessions I’m doing today and tomorrow are not required of me. However, given responsibilities that stem from my committee appointments, this training is a really good idea. It will help me do my job better, and I’m bringing home resources I can share with other committee members who can benefit from them. The training may be taking up eighteen hours of my life right now, but I anticipate what I’m learning may save me at least that many hours of spinning my wheels just in the coming semester.

The online training was something I was required to take, but it strikes me as the minimal amount of information adequate to prepare someone for my committee duties. Plus, the online training is being required of a larger population at my university than just members of my committee, so we committee members are also doing the online training to ensure that we understand how well it’s working for the other people taking it.

One thing I’m thinking in light of this week of training is that my committee might want to find a way to offer periodic opportunities for live training on campus (at least as a companion to the online training if not as a substitutable alternative). If we want the people who are partaking of the training to have more than a minimal grasp of the material on which they’re being trained, recognizing different learning styles and building in more open-ended interactivity might bring about better results.