Hammers and nails
Bielefeld University, Main Hall
While the Los Angeles Times reports on costs without benefits of high speed rail in California, I’m sitting in a train speeding between Cologne and Frankfurt at 275 km per hour (170 mph) – with internet access (unfortunately not free yet) and a cup of coffee that I just bought from a guy from the restaurant car who walks past every now and then. Will we ever have trains like this in California?
I’ve been in Germany for over two weeks, and today I’m flying home. While here I attended two conferences at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld University. The second conference was on “The Social Relevance of the Philosophy of Science,” splendidly organized by Martin Carrier and Don Howard. One issue that kept coming up was the “academic division of labor” – that is, how can different disciplines best collaborate in teaching and research, such that their respective viewpoints complement rather than undermine each other?
Bielefeld University is a perfect place to ponder such questions, since it was designed in the late 1960s with the specific goal of promoting interdisciplinary collaboration. As you can see in these pictures, the entire university is in one building. It consists of a large central hall with wings heading off from the center, and towers rising up from the wings. Since all the departments are so close together, it’s easy to visit colleagues from other departments, and people often meet spontaneously in the central hall, which is a bit like an airport with cafes and restaurants, a dining hall, bakery, grocery store, and bank, among other things.
Peter Weingart gave one of the last talks of the conference, reflecting on the way relations between disciplines have changed during his long career in Bielefeld. He opened his remarks by saying that as a sociologist he felt very comfortable among the philosophers at the meeting, which is saying quite a bit given the history of the fields. To make a long story short, interdisciplinary work has become much more common and much easier than in the past. Forty years ago, Peter said, philosophers and sociologists usually either annoyed or ignored each other. Today many scholars believe that the most interesting and socially relevant work requires insights from multiple fields.
But the challenge that kept coming up in our discussions was to identify how different disciplines can best contribute to collaborative work. The point is not that only those with certain qualifications should address certain questions – as if only sociologists should study social structures or only philosophers should study ideas. But on any given topic, so much research has often already been done, that newcomers from other fields may have difficulty to avoid reinventing the wheel.
Moreover, different disciplines have different methods, and if you’re not clear about the limits of your methods, you’ll end up treating the world as though it were designed just for you. As the saying goes, once you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Nobody at the conference thought that should be a reason to reject interdisciplinary collaboration, but I think we agreed that doing it well isn’t easy.
Rethinking science literacy
I’m in Germany for a couple of weeks (hence the delay in blogging), in part to participate in two conferences at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at Bielefeld University. At the first conference last week I gave a talk on recent debates over science literacy — what is it, how do you assess it, why is it important?
Every two years the National Science Foundation (NSF) publishes a study called Science and Engineering Indicators, which includes a chapter on what Americans know about science. It’s usually an occasion for much forehead slapping and hand wringing by scientists and science educators. The 2010 edition caused even more consternation than usual, because the NSF removed the questions on evolution and the origins of the universe. The questions had asked people to respond with “true” or “false” to the following statements:
Human beings as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.
The universe began with a huge explosion.
For years now, more than half of the American public has consistently answered those questions incorrectly. Many scientists were upset that the NSF removed the questions from the 2010 study, and they accused the agency of caving in to religious conservatives and whitewashing Americans’ ignorance about science.
But here’s the thing: an earlier study showed that when the evolution question was prefaced with the phrase “according to the theory of evolution,” then 72% of Americans answered correctly. Many people who give the wrong answer are not entirely ignorant about those areas of science, they just don’t accept the mainstream view. They know what the NSF wants them to know, they just don’t believe it. That’s still disturbing, no doubt, but it’s not just a matter of factual knowledge. It seems that when people say they reject evolution, they’re more concerned about cultural and religious identity than scientific knowledge. And if people don’t care much about getting the science right, then simply repeating it over and over isn’t going to help much.
The controversy over the 2010 NSF study was part of a long history of disputes over science literacy. According to the NSF studies, science literacy in America has remained basically unchanged for twenty years, despite enormous efforts to improve it. Now it seems that the NSF may be ready to rethink its approach. In October 2010 I participated in a workshop at the NSF on new concepts and methods for studying science literacy. We produced a report on “Science in the Service of Citizens and Consumers.” It’s discussed in the 2012 edition of the NSF’s Science and Engineering Indicators under the heading “Public Understanding of Science and Its Role in Everyday Life.” (The 2012 edition also restored the evolution and big bang questions, now showing the results for both versions of the questions.)
Our report distinguishes three different purposes of science literacy: intellectual-cultural, practical-consumer, and civic. And it distinguishes three areas of knowledge: scientific facts, scientific processes, and sociopolitical institutions that govern science. The basic idea is that assessments of science literacy should include not only isolated scientific facts and processes, but also the knowledge required for making intelligent consumer decisions and for becoming involved in scientifically complex political issues.
This view of science literacy has been in the background of public discussion for a long time, and it has had some influence on science education in schools and universities. But most science programs still don’t include much consideration of the social and political dimensions of science.
In my talk last week I pointed out that about one-fourth of Americans think the sun goes around the earth. That’s unfortunate, and I’m all in favor of efforts to improve people’s knowledge of basic scientific facts. But how many Americans know the proportion of federal research funding that goes to energy research? (very little). And how many Californians know exactly what happened with the three billion dollars in public funding that we approved for stem cell research? (not what the sponsors of Proposition 71 promised). Those are the sorts of questions we should ask in surveys of science literacy. That’s not going to end the evolution debate, but it seems like a step in the right direction.
Who’s a Luddite?
As with many innovations, those raising critical questions about new educational technologies, such as massive open online courses or MOOCs, risk being called “Luddites.” (See the reader comments on this story about “MOOCs and the Professoriate,” which quotes me expressing some concerns about MOOCs.)
The original Luddites were skilled weavers and knitters who smashed textile machines in early-nineteenth-century England to protect their jobs and livelihoods. They were not opposed to technology as such, but to the specific social consequences they associated with specific technologies.
Moreover, the technologies they destroyed were not new. As Thomas Pynchon explains in “Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?” the stocking-frames destroyed by Ned Ludd in 1779 had been in use since Rev. William Lee invented it in 1589. According to folklore, Rev. Lee loved a woman who kept declining his advances by saying she had knitting to do, so he invented a machine to make hand-knitting obsolete.
Pynchon writes, “The knitting machines which provoked the first Luddite disturbances had been putting people out of work for well over two centuries. Everybody saw this happening — it became part of daily life. They also saw the machines coming more and more to be the property of men who did not work, only owned and hired.”
The point is not that MOOCs will put faculty out of work — they may, but it’s probably too early to say — but that public discussion needs to focus on the various social and economic contexts of online courses, and not merely the wonders or horrors of the technology itself.
Pynchon also notes that the Luddites enjoyed the support of Lord Byron, and his friend Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein could be called a “Luddite novel” — not because it’s anti-technology or anti-modern, but because it warns readers to take good care of their inventions.
Or as Bruno Latour puts it, “Love Your Monsters.” When Dr. Frankenstein meets his creation in the Alps, Latour points out, the monster says he was not born a monster, but only became one after Frankenstein abandoned him.
“Remember, I am thy creature,” the monster protests, “I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed… I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.”
Dr. Frankenstein’s mistake was not to create a new technology, but to assume that its qualities were fixed and its consequences inevitable.
It’s silly to argue either “for” or “against” MOOCs without considering their specific features, how they are socially organized, and how they relate to educational goals and aspirations in specific contexts. And it’s no better to avoid any normative judgment and announce that, like it or not, we must simply “adapt” to the inevitable. Technologies make history, but not as they please.
Let them eat MOOC
In this morning’s New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman echoes his fellow columnist David Brooks’s recent zeal for massive open online courses or MOOCs. He profiles Andrew Ng, associate professor of computer science at Stanford, who “last semester . . . taught 100,000 in an online course on machine learning.”
He taught that many students? What does Friedman think real teachers actually do?
Like many others, Friedman says the current generation of students, having grown up with online media, “is increasingly comfortable learning and interacting with professors through online platforms.”
Interacting? Maybe. But that’s not the same as discussing and debating, which can’t be done with 100,000 students.
Professor Ng is the co-founder of Coursera, which Friedman says will “revolutionize” higher education. Similar ventures getting lots of recent attention include Khan Academy and Udacity.
I have nothing against making online lectures widely available. And the boosters may be right that MOOCs facilitate a “connectivist” approach to learning, with online discussion boards, student-generated content, and peer networks becoming more important than the lectures themselves. Friedman writes, “While the lectures are in English, students have been forming study groups in their own countries to help one another.” That sounds fine.
But it’s disgusting to present MOOCs as a solution to the crisis in public funding for higher education. According to Friedman, “These top-quality learning platforms could enable budget-strained community colleges in America to ‘flip’ their classrooms. That is, download the world’s best lecturers on any subject and let their own professors concentrate on working face-to-face with students.”
Rather than educating readers about what publicly funded education actually provides, Friedman lets them off the hook: No need to raise taxes for higher education, even though taxes are at historic lows, we’ve got Coursera! And no need to help fund local universities in poor countries, the students there can just listen to our professors online!
On top of that, Friedman consigns community college professors to becoming teaching assistants for “the world’s best lecturers on any subject.” Class flipping makes a certain amount of sense. But anyone who has heard a great lecture knows that it’s not just about the speaker’s knowledge or delivery. It’s about the connection with the audience, which easily evaporates when the audience is distributed around the globe, and when listeners can’t ask questions or make comments in person.
Sure, it’s nice to have posters of great paintings and recordings of great concerts, but who thinks those provide an adequate substitute for art museums and live music?
Professor Rock Star
Superstar. Charlatan. Virtuoso. It’s easy to succumb to superlatives when first hearing about a professor who regularly teaches a class so popular that enrollment has gradually climbed to nearly 3,000 students. John Boyer, recently profiled in the Chronicle of Higher Education, teaches a “World Regions” class at Virginia Tech that surveys contemporary issues and events around the globe. With his trademark plaid jacket, wacky humor, pop-culture references, and creative use of online media, Boyer seems to have mastered the art of engaging students and getting them interested in global affairs. And he’s clearly having a lot of fun.
Critics say Boyer’s students are more entertained than educated, but the two don’t necessarily conflict, as long as the basic purpose remains clear. Students don’t learn more when they’re bored.
Other critics may say that Boyer’s energetic use of online media reinforces the worst tendencies of our consumer culture, pandering to the easily distracted, image-driven, sound-bite habits of today’s students. But one lively class isn’t going to shorten anyone’s attention span, and maybe a professor who embraces such tendencies will be better able to enlist students in analyzing them.
On his website Boyer explains:
Today’s students have evolved past utilizing traditional lectures, face-to-face office hours, and even email as primary communication devices. Like it or not, this generation of learners is tied into multiple platforms of instantaneous information exchange, and instead of fighting it, I have chosen to embrace this ‘lingua franca’ in order to increase interaction between myself and the students, but just as important, between the students themselves. This 1) increases accessibility of the instructor as a resource, 2) provides multiple avenues for information dissemination, but also 3) builds a ‘course community’ that takes on a life of its own.
During class, Boyer uses one giant screen for his lecture slides and a second screen for student tweets and instant class polls. He also conducts in-class Skype interviews, and last December he scored an interview with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung Sun Suu Kyi of Myanmar. Between classes Boyer uses Facebook, Twitter, video podcasts, and online office hours to keep students engaged. He grades students based on points they acquire from a variety of exams, quizzes, and short assignments, and students choose how to accumulate points. If they miss a deadline, students can just pick another assignment, so Boyer doesn’t need to evaluate excuses or arrange extensions. He has one technical assistant and a couple of teaching assistants, but there are no traditional discussion sections. For details, check out Boyer’s website, syllabus, and a podcast from a recent SXSW presentation.
From what I’ve gathered, Boyer’s students learn a lot of basic facts about world affairs, and they get inspired to learn a lot more. They probably don’t have much chance to improve their writing skills, and even the lively interaction between Boyer and his students can’t replace the genuine discussion possible in a small class. Indeed, Boyer is quick to say that he would never want all classes to adopt his format. He has a flamboyant personality, he devotes an enormous amount of time to his class, and not all faculty could or should teach a class like his. But aspects of Boyer’s learner-centered pedagogy also apply to small classes. As part of a diverse pedagogic mix, Boyer’s approach is worth checking out.
Class flipping: Good pedagogy or online hype?
Most faculty don’t like to see their students sleeping in class, and most students would rather learn something or sleep somewhere else. The hottest pedagogical innovation to keep everyone awake and learning is the “flipped classroom.” (Here is a useful introduction, infographic, and set of links on class flipping.) Rather than lecturing to students in class and asking them to process the material by writing essays or studying for exams at home, have them listen to a lecture online at home and then talk about it in class. The lecture might be the professor’s own, perhaps broken into digestible segments, or it might be one of the many now available for free online. In large lecture classes, the professor might divide the class into pairs or small groups. However it’s done, the basic idea is not really new at all. It builds on the old pedagogical maxim: be a “guide on the side” rather than a “sage on the stage.”
What does seem relatively new is the attempt to combine the pedagogical argument for classroom flipping with an economic argument for radically expanding online education.
The columnist David Brooks recently noted that “elite, pace-setting universities” are making massive investments in online education. Like other boosters, Brooks says it increases access and flexibility, potentially allowing millions of students around the world to enjoy riveting lectures by the best teachers on any topic. Brooks is overly optimistic about the quality of online courses, ignoring the many contextual factors that make it work well for some students and horribly for others.
But Brooks rightly notes that the internet transmits information better than it generates understanding. He says that online education “turns transmitting knowledge into a commodity that is cheap and globally available. But it also compels colleges to focus on the rest of the learning process, which is where the real value lies. . . . Online education could potentially push colleges up the value chain — away from information transmission and up to higher things.”
A recent TEDx lecture by Villanova law school professor Michele Pistone makes basically the same argument, adding a dose of technological determinism and academic populism. Skeptics concerned about the quality of online courses, she says, suffer from “a failure of imagination.” For Pistone, online ed promises “the worldwide democratization of education.” She doesn’t take up the much-discussed problems with cheating and high drop-out rates. And like Brooks, she ends her discussion by arguing that moving lectures online will improve face-to-face learning in the classroom. “Where the professor moves off the stage and becomes a coach, helping the student to use the information that they need to learn, actively, during every class.”
The problem is that neither Brooks nor Pistone say anything about the basic political and economic conflicts between online education and classroom flipping. They present these developments as complementary, when actually most of the momentum behind online education has more to do with its presumed economic benefits than its pedagogic merits. Online education has enormous potential to cut costs and generate revenue, and as it continues to expand, it’s unlikely that online lectures will be carefully paired with intimate classroom discussions, as the flipping model recommends. Instead, online-only courses will dominate, as universities seek to replace dwindling public funds.
Classroom flipping is a catchy name for good pedagogy. But it’s either cynical or naive to promote it as part of an online education juggernaut.
Strike vote, taxes, and public opinion
Yesterday the California Faculty Association (CFA) announced the results of the strike vote: 70 percent of union members participated, and out of those, 95 percent voted to authorize the CFA leadership to call a strike, should bargaining with the administration fail. That’s a strong majority in favor of going on strike, most likely this fall.
Less patient than the faculty, today a small group of CSU students on five campuses started a hunger strike.
Of course, only a little over half of CSU faculty are CFA members, even though the union represents all CSU professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors, and coaches. So the ever-charming CSU administration spokesman Mike Uhlenkamp called the strike vote “fairly meaningless,” because only 8,300 out of 22,000 faculty voted for it. But that discounts the many faculty who are not CFA members but may support the union on this issue, or at least not oppose it.
The media coverage I’ve seen has been mostly favorable, including these stories in the Sacramento Bee and on NPR, taking care to point out that the strike is not only about faculty pay. In addition to a 1 percent salary increase, specific faculty demands include preserving lecturers’ current right to a 3-year contract following six years of good teaching evaluations, as well as contract provisions regarding class size and academic freedom.
Would going on strike be a good idea? It depends on the purpose. Faculty need to avoid both false humility and false egoism. We need to promote legitimate faculty interests, while making clear that this is also about the larger question of whether our society is going to provide high-quality university education for people from the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder.
In one sense, going on strike is a simple display of economic power. By calling attention to the administration’s economic dependence on the faculty, a strike aims to strengthen the union’s bargaining position. When used as a last resort, a strike is often a justifiable use of economic leverage, especially when the administration seems unwilling to negotiate in good faith.
But critics will challenge the charge of bad faith, and they may see a strike as disrupting a collaborative process of negotiation. Some will say that university faculty dedicated to education should not stoop to the crass assertion of economic power, especially when a strike potentially harms students.
Such criticisms point to the need for going beyond the use of existing economic power and generating new political power. A strike could create an excellent opportunity to persuade voters and public officials that public universities need and deserve public support.
That’s important, because our real employer is not the CSU administration, but the people of California. That employer may be grumpy and conflicted, but it also seems willing to listen.
While the loudly misinformed publicize an image of lazy and overpaid faculty, opinion polls offer a more encouraging picture. According to a November 2011 survey, only 24 percent of respondents say there is a big problem with the quality of higher education in California, but 74 percent say higher education does not get enough state funding. Of course, only 45 percent say they’re willing to pay higher taxes to maintain current funding.
Within the California State Legislature, the situation is much worse. Nearly all the Republicans in the legislature have signed Grover Norquist’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” which requires the signer to pledge to “oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes.” As William B. Daniels points out, the Norquist pledge arguably violates both the U.S. Constitution and the California State Constitution. For example, the California Constitution states (Art. 13, Sect. 31), “The power to tax may not be surrendered or suspended by grant or contract.” A strike could be used to publicize the folly of elected representatives who surrender their independent judgment to an anti-tax ideologue.
A strike could also be an opportunity to rally support for Governor Brown’s tax initiative, which would increase the state sales tax by one-fourth of a cent for five years, and raise income taxes by 1-3 percent on people making over $250,000 annually for seven years. If it doesn’t pass, there will be additional large cuts in CSU funding. A recent poll found a slim majority in favor, but the vote in November could be very close.
Too much to read FAQ
After writing that piece on having too much to read, I frequently asked myself a few questions:
Is complaining about having too much to read a form of humblebragging?
Yes. A humblebrag is “a specific type of bragging which masks the brag in a faux-humble guise.” When academics complain about having too much to read, we’re calling attention to our impressive intellectual ambitions, but concealing the brag within a humble gesture of suffering for a noble cause. “Oh gosh, I hate trying to master five centuries of commentary on Machiavelli. It’s just too much to read!”
What about having too many student papers to read?
Maybe complaining about piles of student papers is also humblebragging, because it calls attention to our pedagogical ambitions. After all, we could assign fewer papers or shorter papers or just switch to multiple choice exams (and with growing class sizes, that seems increasingly necessary). There’s nothing wrong with bragging a little about upholding academic standards in tough times, but then let’s really brag about good teaching instead of complaining about student papers. Complain instead about policies that lead to increasing student to faculty ratios.
Does everyone have too much to read?
No. It’s usually a disease of the relatively affluent. Maybe it’s even a form of affluenza.
Is having too much to read more like having a book or having a headache?
More like a headache. It’s a mental affliction and not a physical object like a book. Having a lot of books may reinforce the affliction, but doesn’t cause it. People who love and collect books (check out these wonderful book photos) don’t necessarily complain about not being able to read them all cover-to-cover.
Is having too many books to read the same as having too little time to read?
No. In their book Discretionary Time: A New Measure of Freedom (excerpt pdf), Robert Goodin and co-authors distinguish between discretionary time, which is the time left over after you’ve completed basic socially necessary tasks (work, childcare, hygiene, sleep), and spare time, which is unscheduled time that you spontaneously use as you like. Some people objectively lack discretionary time (poor single parents), and some have a lot of discretionary time but fill it with extra work and other scheduled activities, resulting in a self-imposed lack of spare time (rich couples with no kids and many fixed commitments). Tenured professors may lack spare time, but they often have a lot of discretionary time that they could devote to reading. The problem it that no matter how much discretionary time a person enjoys, it will never be enough for those who persistently have too much to read. People who complain about having too much to read will always have too much to read, regardless of whether they’re teaching four courses or on sabbatical. (I speak from experience.)
Can a research grant help a person avoid having too much to read?
No. You might hire an assistant to read boring academic articles and summarize them for you, but that doesn’t work for really good books that you need or want to read yourself.
Can having a good memory help you avoid having too much to read?
No. A good memory certainly helps, of course. Once or twice I’ve taken a book off my shelf, something I’d been meaning to read for a long time, and come across my own notes in the margins from when I’d read it before. But no matter how well you remember what you’ve read, you could always read more.
Can setting narrow goals and clear priorities reduce the feeling of having too much to read?
Yes, of course. Good luck with that.
Do you have too much to read?
Not anymore. And the next time I do, I’ll try to keep it to myself.
Too much to read
Today the website Inside Higher Ed published a ditty of mine on how to cope with having too much to read, which you might like to check out, unless you simply have “Too Much to Read.”
Strike vote
Yesterday afternoon I voted to go on strike. The t-shirts worn by the folks staffing the ballot box captured my feelings quite well: “I don’t want to strike. But I will.”
I’d much rather be discussing politics, or reading and writing about politics, than doing politics. But I’d also rather eat a good meal than brush my teeth.
(And, no, I don’t think discussing politics is necessarily a form of political activity, even if it may be “political” in a broad sense. More on that some other time.)
Why strike?
The California Faculty Association (CFA) explains:
Our last faculty contract ended June 30, 2010 and we have been at the table bargaining over a successor agreement for more than 18 months. When we first sat down with management, CFA’s Bargaining Team proposed that the current contract be extended and that we spend our time working together to fight for more money from Sacramento.
Management refused. Collaboration was not what they had in mind. Instead we got only proposals that harm the faculty in the form of takeaways from what is already in our contract.
A major issue is “the escalating shift to a “just in time” teaching force by making more and more faculty positions temporary and short term.”
It is shocking to realize that in California’s largest public university more than half of all teaching jobs—some 12,000 people—are temporary rather than regular, stable, permanent jobs.
Currently, Lecturers who have taught in the same department for six years and receive good evaluations can be offered a three-year contract by their department. The chancellor’s proposal would make the offer of multi-year contracts solely at the discretion of top executives on each campus. This change would mean a return to the exploitative practice of firing experienced teachers to hire new ones at lower pay and little or no benefits.
Other strike goals include ending the freeze on faculty salaries, reducing class size, and resisting the expansion of Extended Education/Continuing Education courses, as described in the recent CFA report. These courses cost students more and pay faculty less than for the same course taken normally.
More generally, as the saying goes, “Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions.” That’s a nice slogan, but it also happens to be true. Of course faculty would like more pay, but those who say it’s only about that haven’t been paying attention.
The usual critics will argue that faculty belong in the classroom, not on the street, and a strike will just hurt the students. But in the past, many students have supported faculty strikes. One student of mine, Justin F., recently sent me an email (he said I could share it), saying that one-day rolling strikes on different campuses are not enough:
Since beginning as a freshman in 2009 I have seen many negative changes to all programs and departments which have led to overcrowding of classes, loss of courses, condensed lesson plans, and increased levels of stress to both students and faculty . . . . I would imagine that a longer strike could lead to the possibility of students not being able to complete Spring ’12 semester which would lead to students requesting a refund of their semester fees. It’s quite possible this threat to a loss of funds would give faculty the leverage they need. . . . Good luck!
Going on strike is a big step, and contingent and non-tenured faculty may have good reason to avoid controversial political activity. Nobody wants to lose their job. But those of us with tenure don’t have that excuse. In fact, controversy is what tenure is for.
Whose University? 