So I recently came across a simple study by a couple anthropologists interested in the effects extrinsic rewards have on human interest. They put a group of people in an observed room with a complicated puzzle that involved word games, logic, and some geometry. (The report actually describes the puzzle for nearly two and half pages--weird). The first group of people, having nothing to do but wait, started working on the puzzle. When the observer came into the room, the subjects asked what it was they were supposed to be doing as participants in the study, but they also wanted to talk about the puzzle. The observer didn't answer their questions and only nodded in response to the progress they were making with the puzzle. The second time she (the observer) came in the room, the subjects were nearly finished with the puzzle and to use a word from the report, they appeared passionately connected to solving it. Not one of the subjects asked what they were supposed to be doing--they wanted to talk about the puzzle. The observer told them they we're free to go, but, you guessed it, they didn't leave until the puzzle was solved hours later. The next group the anthropologists brought into the same situation also started to work on the puzzle while they awaited further instruction. The big difference here was that when the observer came into the room, she watched them work on the puzzle and paid the participants whenever they solved a piece. What came next is not terribly surprising: the group only worked on the puzzle when the observer was present and not one of them was interested in finishing after they were dismissed.
Most of us have been warned of the dangers that might come from turning what we love into a way to make a living. This study certainly seems to shore up such a notion. It also lets scholars like Ken Bain ask questions about the value of grades. Can students connect in any personal way to knowledge if they are always given extrinsic rewards (grades) for the work they do? I imagine the answer is fairly dependent on the student. I know most the Freshman I teach don't feel a bit connected to their school work. By their own admission, they sign up for the classes that fulfill requirements, write papers, take tests, speak up in class, and study in order to get an A and a degree. That's it. And why should instructors expect anything otherwise? What the study concerning the effect of extrinsic rewards suggest to me is not so much the idea that grades prevent students from personalizing knowledge, from making it matter to the lives they lead outside the classroom walls. Rather, I think the study demonstrates that grades create fixed situations where deviation from a plan or even a lack of purpose is absolutely barred. The second group in the study quickly learned their purpose was to make money by performing well in front of the observer. (Sound familiar?). The first group never learned what they were "supposed" to be doing--nothing was ever solidified for them, so they used what was in front of them and did what they found interesting. And while I can only infer this from the study, the first group not only connected to their task (a task they thought was of their own choosing), they also connected to each other in a way the second group did not nearly approach. I wonder if grades don't so much ruin what might be authentic enthusiasm by "paying" or extrinsically rewarding a connection that doesn't require such an action, as much as they dictate what can happen in any given classroom. Grades are behind the student question that I can't stand (but I do understand): "How will this effect my grade?" They want to know how the direction of the class or an assignment fits the prescribed purpose of the class, which, and this is the kicker, is always to get a good grade. It doesn't matter what we write about our classes or how we invite students into the purpose of the class. Grades have already established the purpose, at least for the Freshman. Discussions that appear "un-scored," teaching styles that are difficult to predict, assignments that ask students to create rather than memorize might be uncomfortable because they don't always fit the mold built by our grading system. How can a student win a game where the rules are being created in collaboration? I don't know--but I can't think of better way to connect to whatever it is you're learning.
I've recently realized that much of my grading is based in emotion. And while that scares me and makes me question every letter I write on every paper, I'm starting to actually believe the voice in my head that keeps asking "why is this a problem?" If a student gets exited or worried or angry or whatever in response to their composition--if they connect to it, take risks, and sometimes (apparently) don't give a damn what I think, shouldn't I just give them an A? I wish that wasn't an option. I wish I could, like Evergreen State, Earlham School of Religion, and other schools, write each one of my students personal evaluations that would push them further into their thinking, their fear, their joy, their freaking lives. But for now, I'm stuck with letter grades and I don't know how to get around that.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
An example to help explain my point
A close friend rightly wanted to know if my last post described a "trap...unique to Christians or is it widespread among all those who think in terms of right vs. wrong, regardless of what religion? Or limited to those who believe in Christianity as fundamentalists?" It's a question that has already been raised three or four times in the tiny world I inhibit, so I want to try to give it a little thought here. The first thing to admit is that I'm not at all sure if religion, in general or Christian fundamentalism as it's practiced around here, is what stifles good discussion in the classroom (the kind that students connect to their lives and don't require much of me). What I do know is that students who are chiefly interested in right vs. wrong rather than a religious narrative are often far more likely to push class discussions in interesting and meaningful ways.
An extreme example:
My Miami students read a essay about homosexual couples' right to adopt children written by one of their peers. There's an Ohio law preventing gay couples from adopting, and the student-writer wanted her senator to know she thinks the law is nuts. It's an eloquent, well-constructed piece of 'first-year' writing that I thought served as a perfect example of audience awareness. And while I did try to help my students discover that, they were far more interested in the essay's content. Quite a few of my students treated the issue of gay adoption as a no-brainer: of course it would be better for kids to be adopted than remain in foster care. Others, however, were more tentative. In two out of three of my classes, a few students weren't willing to easily agree with the essay. They didn't appeal to a religious belief. Instead they worried aloud and asked heaps of questions concerning the ramifications gay adoption might have on the kids and the structure of family. In fact, one student said, "I'm not trying to get religious on you guys, I just think we should think about the lives these children will be sort of shoved into." He went on to ask provocative questions that generated what looked like reflection and re-thinking. Lots of people ended up saying things like, "alright I see what your saying, but what about..." It was awesome. Most everyone in the room gradually grew a little uncomfortable while they tried to figure out what was right and wrong.
In each class that day, but in one particularly, there were also a few students who either checked-out of the conversation or made it obvious they thought the whole discussion was flat ridiculous. Lots of them wore knowing smirks (a pose I'm fairly sympathetic toward). These were my committed Christian students, and while I did everything I could to get their viewpoint into the room, it didn't work. This was not, as I assumed, because they were reluctant to share their religious views. They were fine with that. It turned out they thought the whole discussion was kind of silly, that trying to figure out what's right and wrong isn't all that necessary. Things were much clearer for these students...
...Maybe it's best to leave it at that--the same place the class more or less ended.
An extreme example:
My Miami students read a essay about homosexual couples' right to adopt children written by one of their peers. There's an Ohio law preventing gay couples from adopting, and the student-writer wanted her senator to know she thinks the law is nuts. It's an eloquent, well-constructed piece of 'first-year' writing that I thought served as a perfect example of audience awareness. And while I did try to help my students discover that, they were far more interested in the essay's content. Quite a few of my students treated the issue of gay adoption as a no-brainer: of course it would be better for kids to be adopted than remain in foster care. Others, however, were more tentative. In two out of three of my classes, a few students weren't willing to easily agree with the essay. They didn't appeal to a religious belief. Instead they worried aloud and asked heaps of questions concerning the ramifications gay adoption might have on the kids and the structure of family. In fact, one student said, "I'm not trying to get religious on you guys, I just think we should think about the lives these children will be sort of shoved into." He went on to ask provocative questions that generated what looked like reflection and re-thinking. Lots of people ended up saying things like, "alright I see what your saying, but what about..." It was awesome. Most everyone in the room gradually grew a little uncomfortable while they tried to figure out what was right and wrong.
In each class that day, but in one particularly, there were also a few students who either checked-out of the conversation or made it obvious they thought the whole discussion was flat ridiculous. Lots of them wore knowing smirks (a pose I'm fairly sympathetic toward). These were my committed Christian students, and while I did everything I could to get their viewpoint into the room, it didn't work. This was not, as I assumed, because they were reluctant to share their religious views. They were fine with that. It turned out they thought the whole discussion was kind of silly, that trying to figure out what's right and wrong isn't all that necessary. Things were much clearer for these students...
...Maybe it's best to leave it at that--the same place the class more or less ended.
Friday, November 21, 2008
An Inappropriate and Slightly Disjointed Rant
Generally Christianity gets in our way—especially in the classroom at Indiana University East. But it pops its dogmatic little head up plenty at Mimi University. Now I’m not going to make some sweeping, uncomplicated claim that America’s most popular religion is nothing more than an archaic obstacle that needs to be overcome. The Christian narrative is powerful and beautifully complex; I love it. I mean, some of my best friends are Christians. (It’s an odd feeling to use that line and have it actually be true). My issue with Christianity, at least as a college English instructor, is what it does to conversations in the classroom that threaten to complicate, to really muck up, whatever topic is at hand. These conversations have nothing to do with me—that much I’m sure of. What’ll happen (and this will probably sound familiar) is a couple of students will discover they actually believe what their saying in class. Suddenly, for them, the performance that we call ‘talking in class’ lessens and they find themselves committed to their particular point of view. Then, on really good days, the fun starts. Someone in the room challenges what was just said by the student still surprised by their sudden passion. And regardless if that challenge was mere performance, the air in the room moves a bit differently. I usually try to find a way to get to a desk if I’m not already in one—then I wait. Often I wait for nothing, and am forced to ask a question or rephrase a comment in a way that gets us all back to our prescribed roles so we can carry on with the production that is a class discussion. I’ve an obvious hunch that the real conversations (and thus learning) always take place “in the dorms,” apart from class. Sometimes, however, if I did my job accidentally perfectly and if the gods are on my side, the discussion happens right in the classroom, ignoring, maybe forgetting where it is.
The real satisfaction of a good class discussions is that there’s too many ideas swirling around, too many ideologies that need defending, too many feelings that get hurt, too many ‘sides’ that get named, too much to sum up, too much to talk about. It just keeps unfolding into more and more uncertainty. We, as a class, can’t get to a conclusive answer, but, and this is the best part, we aren’t willing to let everybody be right—no one is going to “agree to disagree,” not during a good class discussion.
I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of a few of these both as student and on the other side of the room. What I can’t pin-down is a pattern or a particular move that gets these kinds of discussions going. I have learned what kills them though, and sadly it’s the thing that probably should complicate them: Christianity. For all the strange and intriguing contractions which fill the pages of the Christian scriptures, one could make the argument (in fact I do) that it’s a tradition that should support what I believe is a good class discussion. But it doesn’t, at least it hasn’t. And having spent a couple years in my early twenties trying like mad to belong to fundamentalist Christianity, I think I get it—I think. This is a tradition that manifests in the classroom in the form of a monster that arrests and fixes the fluctuating and irregular nature of narrative. It’s got answers before the question gets a chance to breathe. Consequently, a discussion in an already structured (fixed) environment, like a classroom, is a cozy couch for the cranky side of Christianity. Instead of engaging, even entertaining, the demanding ideas that surface in a classroom discussion, I watch student after student pause, roll whatever notion was just put forth around in their head for a second, then condemn it as something that doesn’t fit into what they believe—it’s not binary enough, it lacks an clear right and wrong. We’re all guilty of this in one form or another, of course. But too often inside our class at Indiana University East, the fervor for the right answer, the comfortable all-encompassing truth drowns everything. The unsure won’t speak. It’s not my job to push my own ideology or value system on students, and I don’t. But I worry when discomfort and mystery are not only barred from leaving the room, they’re forced to become the kind of comprehendible flesh that my students can drive a nail through.
The real satisfaction of a good class discussions is that there’s too many ideas swirling around, too many ideologies that need defending, too many feelings that get hurt, too many ‘sides’ that get named, too much to sum up, too much to talk about. It just keeps unfolding into more and more uncertainty. We, as a class, can’t get to a conclusive answer, but, and this is the best part, we aren’t willing to let everybody be right—no one is going to “agree to disagree,” not during a good class discussion.
I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of a few of these both as student and on the other side of the room. What I can’t pin-down is a pattern or a particular move that gets these kinds of discussions going. I have learned what kills them though, and sadly it’s the thing that probably should complicate them: Christianity. For all the strange and intriguing contractions which fill the pages of the Christian scriptures, one could make the argument (in fact I do) that it’s a tradition that should support what I believe is a good class discussion. But it doesn’t, at least it hasn’t. And having spent a couple years in my early twenties trying like mad to belong to fundamentalist Christianity, I think I get it—I think. This is a tradition that manifests in the classroom in the form of a monster that arrests and fixes the fluctuating and irregular nature of narrative. It’s got answers before the question gets a chance to breathe. Consequently, a discussion in an already structured (fixed) environment, like a classroom, is a cozy couch for the cranky side of Christianity. Instead of engaging, even entertaining, the demanding ideas that surface in a classroom discussion, I watch student after student pause, roll whatever notion was just put forth around in their head for a second, then condemn it as something that doesn’t fit into what they believe—it’s not binary enough, it lacks an clear right and wrong. We’re all guilty of this in one form or another, of course. But too often inside our class at Indiana University East, the fervor for the right answer, the comfortable all-encompassing truth drowns everything. The unsure won’t speak. It’s not my job to push my own ideology or value system on students, and I don’t. But I worry when discomfort and mystery are not only barred from leaving the room, they’re forced to become the kind of comprehendible flesh that my students can drive a nail through.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
On-line Courses Might Make Us Human.
I have this little tickle telling me to start by saying, settle-down people, it’s alright. I know On-line classes are increasing in popularity. And although I’ve only taught (or better, ‘monitored’) one of them, I can see why. They certainly offer all kinds of flexibility to commuter students—those with jobs, kids, marriages and so on. Not that traditional freshman don’t have lives beyond the campus, it’s just that, for the most part, traditional freshman don’t have lives beyond the campus. And that’s great. My Miami University students have very little to do expect figure out this kaleidoscope of a world in the company of new (most likely life-long) friends, new ideas, and the strange people they call professors. At IUE things are different, and while most of the students there make strange faces when I use the phrase ‘On-Line Class,” they’re all bound to use them at some point. Their schedules will demand it, and the administration keeps offering more and more of it’s courses in an on-line format. What I think is most interesting, and probably most surprising, is that whatever the on-line class they’re forced to take, these students are going to engage in the material in ways that a teacher simply would not have provided.
Look, the notion that a professor/teacher (maybe at any level) is still viewed as a spouting source of knowledge that students need to sit before, open their heads, and collect as much precious information as possible is over—can I get an amen!? Not only are facts, figures, diagrams, ‘how-to-videos,’ explanations, and histories all available on the web, so are interesting discussions about what these things might mean, how they connect, and matter. This year I’ve learned to think much deeper about our political system, for example, by reading and commenting (engaging) on blogs, watching arguments made with images (often posted on youtube), and piecing together differing pages of differing websites, than I ever did in a semester of ‘American Politics 101.’ What’s more, I’ve been completely in control of what I've learned and how I thought about it—no one was demanding I puke particular bits of the information back up on a test. That is to say, it’s mine. And it didn’t require face-to-face interaction with a teacher.
What I did need (and still do) is some kind of human experience to give what I learn both relevance and complication. While learning on-line finally gives power to the person who needs it most—the student, it’s still an environment that lacks lots of real humans. I’m not saying that teachers and students can’t build some kind of cool intellectual relationship on-line, they can. They do. I did. But it’s not wholly satisfying, and if the concern about on-line classes is that they will somehow usurp the brick-and-mortar classroom, then , it seems to me, people charged with teaching can rightly start worrying about why their physical presence is so important. Put another way, the on-line class (and the web itself) just may force the blowhard in front of the lecture hall to pipe-down, really listen, and realize they’re probably not disseminating divine information. This may be easy for me to say—none of my ideas are new and half the classrooms I teach in are digital spaces. At the same time, I still blunder my way through most classes not because a lecture fell flat (they always do by the way, I don’t care what expressions our students wear while we’re talking). Rather, I blunder all over the place because of what I hope is an inexperienced attempt to create both an engaging and very human classroom. Of course “we” all do, right? As Alex Reid writes, “asking a room of faculty if they don't want to provide engaging experiences for their students is somewhat like asking a room of people to raise their hands if they are racist.” Any teacher/scholar worth their salt wants to engage their students. But if we’re not offering a place were things happen that couldn’t happen on-line, why even show up (especially if you’re a student). I can read PowerPoint slides on my own. I can memorize a professors notes and spit them back out on a test all by myself; I wouldn't need to leave my house or dorm room for that. What I can’t do on my own is generate relevant knowledge in the presence of other faces that not only challenge that knowledge with their words, they can do it simply with their presence—that is if teachers acknowledge that physical presence as everything that matters.
Look, the notion that a professor/teacher (maybe at any level) is still viewed as a spouting source of knowledge that students need to sit before, open their heads, and collect as much precious information as possible is over—can I get an amen!? Not only are facts, figures, diagrams, ‘how-to-videos,’ explanations, and histories all available on the web, so are interesting discussions about what these things might mean, how they connect, and matter. This year I’ve learned to think much deeper about our political system, for example, by reading and commenting (engaging) on blogs, watching arguments made with images (often posted on youtube), and piecing together differing pages of differing websites, than I ever did in a semester of ‘American Politics 101.’ What’s more, I’ve been completely in control of what I've learned and how I thought about it—no one was demanding I puke particular bits of the information back up on a test. That is to say, it’s mine. And it didn’t require face-to-face interaction with a teacher.
What I did need (and still do) is some kind of human experience to give what I learn both relevance and complication. While learning on-line finally gives power to the person who needs it most—the student, it’s still an environment that lacks lots of real humans. I’m not saying that teachers and students can’t build some kind of cool intellectual relationship on-line, they can. They do. I did. But it’s not wholly satisfying, and if the concern about on-line classes is that they will somehow usurp the brick-and-mortar classroom, then , it seems to me, people charged with teaching can rightly start worrying about why their physical presence is so important. Put another way, the on-line class (and the web itself) just may force the blowhard in front of the lecture hall to pipe-down, really listen, and realize they’re probably not disseminating divine information. This may be easy for me to say—none of my ideas are new and half the classrooms I teach in are digital spaces. At the same time, I still blunder my way through most classes not because a lecture fell flat (they always do by the way, I don’t care what expressions our students wear while we’re talking). Rather, I blunder all over the place because of what I hope is an inexperienced attempt to create both an engaging and very human classroom. Of course “we” all do, right? As Alex Reid writes, “asking a room of faculty if they don't want to provide engaging experiences for their students is somewhat like asking a room of people to raise their hands if they are racist.” Any teacher/scholar worth their salt wants to engage their students. But if we’re not offering a place were things happen that couldn’t happen on-line, why even show up (especially if you’re a student). I can read PowerPoint slides on my own. I can memorize a professors notes and spit them back out on a test all by myself; I wouldn't need to leave my house or dorm room for that. What I can’t do on my own is generate relevant knowledge in the presence of other faces that not only challenge that knowledge with their words, they can do it simply with their presence—that is if teachers acknowledge that physical presence as everything that matters.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Yes , Politics and Race are Uncomfortable
9:00 AM, Nov.5th – I stood bleary-eyed in front of 22 18-year-olds who actually looked worse than me. It had been, regardless of political affiliation, a late night. The plan was to have one more conversation about the difference between written prose and prose that is meant to be spoken (their “audio essays” are due on the 7th). That didn’t happen. Out of rummy joy and what I can only call the ‘controlled recklessness’ that defines my teaching personae, I asked a question: “Do you think people voted for Obama simply because he is black?” And I got a straightforward answer: “Of course.” I waited for a minute, nodding my head, convincing the class that these questions had only just occurred to me in the car or the shower this morning. Then: “Do you think that’s a problem?” My normally quiet, too-early-for-human-activity, 9:00am English class erupted. (That may be too strong a word, but the quiet tension behind every face and every uttered argument seems to justify it).
Miami University in Ohio is not necessarily celebrated for it’s diverse student population. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The school often gets called “JCREW U”—there’s a youtube video that reflects this sentiment, unfortunately, fairly well. My three classes at the university are not only homogeneous in terms of race (we’re nearly all white), there is very little economic diversity (we’re all from either solidly middle or upper class families). It’s a far cry different than the kind of classroom I’m used to standing in front of in Chicago or Dayton. Not that there isn’t difference—the more I get to know my students, no surprise, the more those differences arise.
Class the day after the election, to say the least, exposed some of those differences. Here’s a few sample comments from my students: “The most ignorant vote people made yesterday was based on skin color.” “Why should my parents be responsible for inner-city school’s problems instead of sending their daughter to college.” “What, you think that paying more taxes is going to go to black people, like Obama is going to hang on the street corner and pass out cash?” “I’m not upset even though I voted for McCain. I just thought Obama’s speech sounded a little Martin-Luther-Kingy. I hope he knows he has to be president of all of us.” “If you don’t know the policies you’re voting for, you shouldn’t vote. It doesn’t matter what the president looks like.”
Discomfort followed nearly every comment in every class. In my last class, we have two people of color (2 out of 22 may be a good representation of Miami’s student body) and, predictably, that class was the only one that tried to evade my question concerning race. People in each class, however, shuffled in their seats, ran their hands through their hair, brought up California’s gay marriage ban, taxes, television coverage, anything that might move us away from race. We kept coming back.
A few days before the election, a student of mine at Indiana University East started laughing in the back row. What was funny, she shockingly wasn’t afraid to show me, was a picture on her phone someone had sent her: the back of man’s T-shirt that read “N***er please, it’s the WHITE house.” It’s not racist, relax, it’s just a silly joke she said.
I’ve never been more convinced that composition instructors are charged with much more than the proper order of nouns and verbs (not that many of us still actually teach such things). Obama, as president, will help us "expose" the very real impact of our seemingly innocent and mundane language on lives lived in flesh-and-bone bodies for our students (and for ourselves). There is always so much at stake in the classroom, cheers?
Miami University in Ohio is not necessarily celebrated for it’s diverse student population. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The school often gets called “JCREW U”—there’s a youtube video that reflects this sentiment, unfortunately, fairly well. My three classes at the university are not only homogeneous in terms of race (we’re nearly all white), there is very little economic diversity (we’re all from either solidly middle or upper class families). It’s a far cry different than the kind of classroom I’m used to standing in front of in Chicago or Dayton. Not that there isn’t difference—the more I get to know my students, no surprise, the more those differences arise.
Class the day after the election, to say the least, exposed some of those differences. Here’s a few sample comments from my students: “The most ignorant vote people made yesterday was based on skin color.” “Why should my parents be responsible for inner-city school’s problems instead of sending their daughter to college.” “What, you think that paying more taxes is going to go to black people, like Obama is going to hang on the street corner and pass out cash?” “I’m not upset even though I voted for McCain. I just thought Obama’s speech sounded a little Martin-Luther-Kingy. I hope he knows he has to be president of all of us.” “If you don’t know the policies you’re voting for, you shouldn’t vote. It doesn’t matter what the president looks like.”
Discomfort followed nearly every comment in every class. In my last class, we have two people of color (2 out of 22 may be a good representation of Miami’s student body) and, predictably, that class was the only one that tried to evade my question concerning race. People in each class, however, shuffled in their seats, ran their hands through their hair, brought up California’s gay marriage ban, taxes, television coverage, anything that might move us away from race. We kept coming back.
A few days before the election, a student of mine at Indiana University East started laughing in the back row. What was funny, she shockingly wasn’t afraid to show me, was a picture on her phone someone had sent her: the back of man’s T-shirt that read “N***er please, it’s the WHITE house.” It’s not racist, relax, it’s just a silly joke she said.
I’ve never been more convinced that composition instructors are charged with much more than the proper order of nouns and verbs (not that many of us still actually teach such things). Obama, as president, will help us "expose" the very real impact of our seemingly innocent and mundane language on lives lived in flesh-and-bone bodies for our students (and for ourselves). There is always so much at stake in the classroom, cheers?
Sunday, November 2, 2008
An introduction to difference
My students are always shocked, sometimes quite visibly, to learn that objects such as desks, a chalk/white board, the presence of other people their age staring at someone different than them--someone with their shirt tucked in--all contribute to one loud lecture. Without having to vocalize it, even think it, everyone in such a room knows this is a classroom, and this is how I am to exist in a classroom. Exposing the identity shaping culture of a classroom is relatively easy. I do the same thing a professor in community college did to me. I wait for the first student to raise their hand, then stare at them, making sure to look completely confused. This has, so far, always lead to a conversation about how we all know what such a strange action means. And more importantly, what the action means in a classroom as opposed to a restaurant or at Grandma's Thanksgiving table. It's always different and it's always the place that dictates that difference. Invariably, a few students will begin to admit they have an identity in the presence of desks and chalk boards that doesn't necessarily survive apart from rooms which contains these artifacts. (It's a discovery that convinces me that the real academic conversations, the ones teachers like me long for in the classroom, will only occur in the 'dorms." And that's okay, it has to be). My three classes at Miami University (a SEC, 40,000 student, traditional college) all have a whiteboard, desks, a desktop computer connected to a projector, and this cool "overhead machine" that can put anything and everything up on the screen (including my face...in color. It rocks). So it looks like a classroom. I move the desks all over the room, I teach from different spots everyday--often I sit in one of the desks, and because the class is part of the University's Digital Writing Collaborative, every student has their laptop in front of them--we've never used a pencil. But it's still a classroom.
My three classes at Indiana University East (a 2,400 student commuter campus) look far more classroomy than my Miami classrooms. Yet the students often seem more willing to challenge what should take place in such in a space. No doubt this is because many of these students are what academe dubs "Non-traditional." They don't live on campus, many of them are over nineteen, they're married, working, trying to remember how they're expected to perform within the four walls of a classroom. I have plenty of students who are eighteen or nineteen, who just graduated from high school (in fact, the number of these students is quickly increasing at Indiana University East). But they sit next to forty-year-old single parents excited to finally be inside the college classroom, military men and women, and people (re)training for a new or different career. This changes things--to say the least.
As it stands, I'm not sure which classroom I prefer to be "in-front" of. I suppose choosing would be impossible when I see them both every week. My students and what happens in the classrooms we create together have, quite honestly, become my single obsession. The universities I work for are as widely different as each student's essay I grade. There are hundreds of blogs all over the web that deal with the Rhetoric and Composition classroom; they're personal, interesting, and I learn heaps from them. This blog, however, is a place for me to express my blunders, to help me define what 'success' means in the writing classroom, to connect a huge part of my life to those I miss and love, to support any instructor/teacher who wanders by, and most importantly, to learn what I know by using what will never be mine: language. It's time to do what I push my students to do.
Cheers!
My three classes at Indiana University East (a 2,400 student commuter campus) look far more classroomy than my Miami classrooms. Yet the students often seem more willing to challenge what should take place in such in a space. No doubt this is because many of these students are what academe dubs "Non-traditional." They don't live on campus, many of them are over nineteen, they're married, working, trying to remember how they're expected to perform within the four walls of a classroom. I have plenty of students who are eighteen or nineteen, who just graduated from high school (in fact, the number of these students is quickly increasing at Indiana University East). But they sit next to forty-year-old single parents excited to finally be inside the college classroom, military men and women, and people (re)training for a new or different career. This changes things--to say the least.
As it stands, I'm not sure which classroom I prefer to be "in-front" of. I suppose choosing would be impossible when I see them both every week. My students and what happens in the classrooms we create together have, quite honestly, become my single obsession. The universities I work for are as widely different as each student's essay I grade. There are hundreds of blogs all over the web that deal with the Rhetoric and Composition classroom; they're personal, interesting, and I learn heaps from them. This blog, however, is a place for me to express my blunders, to help me define what 'success' means in the writing classroom, to connect a huge part of my life to those I miss and love, to support any instructor/teacher who wanders by, and most importantly, to learn what I know by using what will never be mine: language. It's time to do what I push my students to do.
Cheers!
Academia 2.0
Kansas State University's Anthropology department has been using video to explore/expose the college classroom. (This work should have been done by "us," Rhet/Comp people, but oh well. I suppose the fact that it's getting done is what matters.) Here's one of their longer, more traditional projects.
While I don't mind the not-so-subtle celebration of digital technology here, I'm far more interested in the quiet assertion that the best way to use technology in the university classroom is to create a relevant and, more importantly, a human environment.
While I don't mind the not-so-subtle celebration of digital technology here, I'm far more interested in the quiet assertion that the best way to use technology in the university classroom is to create a relevant and, more importantly, a human environment.
The Audio Essay
My students at Miami University are working on "audio essays." As part of the "Miami Plan" (basic core curriculum that the University would like all the Freshman to encounter), I'm charged with helping my students experience what get's called "Entering Public Discourse." That's really how the administration says it. Now I'm certainly not troubled by the notion of helping students engage with a discourse that is "public," or that exists outside the classroom walls. In fact, figuring out how to get eighteen-year-olds who are living apart from the rule of their parents' house for the first time to recognize that what they say and do can matter beyond me and their grade often consumes me. That said, my problem is with the word "entering." It's as if we, as researchers, professors, instructors, writers, and whatever, believe the illusion that students have not already been moving and morphing "public discourse." And now, lucky them, we're going to show them this illusive door and grant them the full tour.
But that's not what I'm wanting to share with you. What I want to share with you is my excitement for what the students are turning in on Friday. For the last few weeks, they've been researching an issue of their choice that could, in one way or another, be considered "public." We've been verbally hashing out what it means to be a child of gay parents, why the drinking age is 21, whether or not "free speech" actually exists, issues of child obesity, the odd religious feelings generated by the saving rhetoric of technology, politics, abortion, and many other "public" debates. Instead of translating these discussions into formal college essays (a notion that I find myself resiting more and more, yet constantly catching myself using to help me judge the work that gets generated in class), the students have been writing scripts and recording Public Service Announcements. They're working in teams, with new digital audio recorders and access to huge databases of sound effects and music, to construct two different pieces: they only have one topic, but they're communicating to two separate audiences. This is not exactly a new or innovative assignment--composition teachers have been doing such work since the technology has been available. Before that, as many of you may remember, we made collages and posters to argue a particular side of an issue. But this is the first time I've assigned such a project and the first time my 66 Miami students have had to think differently about composition. So, in that way, it's brand new--again. I say all this for a few reasons: 1.) I plan to share some of their work with you on this blog; 2.) I'm frickin' terribly excited about what I'll hear on Friday; 3.) My students have begun to ignore me--they've not only forgotten I'm the "one with the red pen," but also, and more importantly, they're not thinking about me as their audience. They know who they need to convince and they're recognizing that using one particular word for an audience of parents won't work for an audience of college students; and 4.) My students are beginning to realize they've always known how to do this--they're good at it. They "instinctively" know if they should tell a sad story to appeal to the emotions of their audience, or if they should try solid-sounding facts and cite several studies that make use of statistics. And now, maybe, they can recognize when the "public" is doing it to them.
Here are few examples that have caused some controversy in our classroom, and certainly lead to some inspiration:
Free Speech
Heifer Project
Cheers!
But that's not what I'm wanting to share with you. What I want to share with you is my excitement for what the students are turning in on Friday. For the last few weeks, they've been researching an issue of their choice that could, in one way or another, be considered "public." We've been verbally hashing out what it means to be a child of gay parents, why the drinking age is 21, whether or not "free speech" actually exists, issues of child obesity, the odd religious feelings generated by the saving rhetoric of technology, politics, abortion, and many other "public" debates. Instead of translating these discussions into formal college essays (a notion that I find myself resiting more and more, yet constantly catching myself using to help me judge the work that gets generated in class), the students have been writing scripts and recording Public Service Announcements. They're working in teams, with new digital audio recorders and access to huge databases of sound effects and music, to construct two different pieces: they only have one topic, but they're communicating to two separate audiences. This is not exactly a new or innovative assignment--composition teachers have been doing such work since the technology has been available. Before that, as many of you may remember, we made collages and posters to argue a particular side of an issue. But this is the first time I've assigned such a project and the first time my 66 Miami students have had to think differently about composition. So, in that way, it's brand new--again. I say all this for a few reasons: 1.) I plan to share some of their work with you on this blog; 2.) I'm frickin' terribly excited about what I'll hear on Friday; 3.) My students have begun to ignore me--they've not only forgotten I'm the "one with the red pen," but also, and more importantly, they're not thinking about me as their audience. They know who they need to convince and they're recognizing that using one particular word for an audience of parents won't work for an audience of college students; and 4.) My students are beginning to realize they've always known how to do this--they're good at it. They "instinctively" know if they should tell a sad story to appeal to the emotions of their audience, or if they should try solid-sounding facts and cite several studies that make use of statistics. And now, maybe, they can recognize when the "public" is doing it to them.
Here are few examples that have caused some controversy in our classroom, and certainly lead to some inspiration:
Free Speech
Heifer Project
Cheers!
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