GoogleWave & Literature Update

Better late than never! Two of my three volunteers to use Google Wave are finally composing creative pieces on it. :-) (The third is having some technical difficulties; hopefully we can iron that out today.)

One advantage of using GWave over a shared GDoc is already evident: Whereas opening a GDoc presents only the latest version, clicking an updated Google Wave will show all of the revisions made since you last looked at it.

True, you can see the revisions of a Google Doc if you click around a bit, but this is much more convenient. I can simply click through my students' waves and see what edits and additions they've made without wasting much time.

This may become a standard feature of my teaching, if I can acquire more Google Wave invites. :-)

Graduate Library Liaison Grant

Well, this is some good news! Notre Dame's ISLA program just awarded me a Graduate Library Liaison Grant! I'm more interested in the position itself--in the subject of Catholic Studies--than the actual grant. Here's some of the experience I'll be gaining (swiped from the award letter):

1. Collecting lists of resources that graduate students and faculty would like the subject librarian to acquire.
2. Researching newly available electronic and print resources, and considering their overlap with existing library resources.
3. Helping the subject librarian to create FAQ lists about acquisitions and resources for the department.
4. Helping redefine databases so that the descriptions are user-oriented.
5. Creating lists of underused library resources and making them available to the department or to specialized areas within the department.
6. Communicating with established library committees.
7. Keeping the departmental graduate student body aware of the full extent of our ever-expanding library resources (for research and for teaching).

In other words, I'll be coordinating people and resources, learning more about CS resources, and working with everything/one hands-on--a chance to really get "down and dirty" in the field. And the position is interdisciplinary: since Notre Dame doesn't actually have a Catholic Studies program, I'll be working with folks in a variety of different fields whose interests intersect CS.

This is totally awesome. I can't wait.

Google Wave and Literature: The Glitch

Well, things never go as smoothly as you like, so always have a back-up plan. I divided my students originally into three groups:

1. Those using GWave on their assignment
2. Those using GDocs, as a sort of control group (see previous post)
3. Those doing the assignment normally

I also had volunteers from the first two groups commit to writing a certain amount of their assignment every day. In theory, I can keep tabs on how much they write and let them know if they are going off in a dangerous direction; as a plus, I can require the students to write daily without having to look at tons of homework handed in--no trees are killed, and they don't have to worry about handing anything in.

The Glitch: Google hasn't responded to my GWave invite for my students.

Since the assignment is coming up, I've merged group 1 with group 2--all will do GDocs this time around. That's not a problem--when Google gets their act together, we can use GWave for the next assignment. My students are flexible--after all, there's that extra credit incentive, and a bit of novelty introduced into their homework as well. And they seem to be enjoying that.

And that's always a plus. :-)

Happy teaching!

Unobjective Grading

Today I finished grading my students' first major essays this semester. One practice I find useful, if slightly more time-consuming, is giving as many complimentary comments on an assignment as critical ones. With the "cream of the crop" essays, I really don't have to try; for the rest, I usually write all of my harsh comments first, since those are at the forefront of my mind, and then go back and look for things that they did well (however minuscule in importance).

There's a very practical reason for this: student evals. When I tried this the first time, I received very high marks for "usefulness of feedback". The next semester, curious to see what would happen, I didn't bother to equalize comments. Student evaluation of "usefulness" dropped 10% (most categories only showed a 1-2% difference between the two semesters). So the following semester, I returned to marking complimentary points. Again, student evals in this category went way up.

So I'm doing it again for the third time. But what I noticed today is rather disconcerting, if important to recognize. When I took the time to reread the essays and look for good points, after making critical comments, my assessment of the essays themselves improved. Papers that I originally thought should be graded at around a "D" made it into the C and even B ranges; no paper was less than a "C", IIRC. The only exceptions were the papers that I didn't need to try to mark well--my original assessments of them remained.

The relative rankings of the essays remained the same: those that I first assessed as deserving of a higher grade I still assess as such, and those originally assessed as deserving a lower grade still deserve one. But the actual grades themselves have shifted upwards.

If my observation is accurate, then I think I owe it to my students to look for the positives every time. Otherwise, I might be allowing a "teacher's predisposition towards the negative"--a sort of critical set of blinders--to deprive the students of their full earned grade.

I'm sure that what all you teachers out there want to hear is that you need to spend more time grading. But saving time grading is a subject for another post.

Happy grading!

Teaching Literature with GoogleWave

Today's Chronicle of Higher Education includes one professor's experience with podcasting as a new classroom technology. Like Professor Lang (the article's author), I have reservations about technologies that are all glitz and no guts--that don't contribute substantially to the classroom. Wait--reservations? No, actually, just contempt. But I suspect that for most technologies it is not the tech itself that poses a problem, but rather the ways in which it is used. This, too, Lang argues about podcasting.

Always one open for experimentation, I've been looking for an opportunity to try Google's much raved-about new technology, waves, in the classroom. And that opportunity may be now.

I'm grading my first round of major essays this semester, and it's clear that some students had trouble understanding what was asked of them and many probably wrote the paper the night before/morning of and didn't proofread (let alone revise). Obviously, next time I teach this course I'll improve the clarity of my instructions; but for now I have to deal with the situation as it is. How to prevent the same problems again?

If I assign the students to use Google Wave to compose their papers, with myself as one of the wave participants, I can see exactly how much work they do on their papers each day, and what kind of work. I can even make comments in it if I see them going off track--"Oops, that's not what I meant when I wrote X in the assignment!"

To test this, I propose to do the following:

1. Offer extra credit for volunteers to participate in this study. I'm thinking about a third of a letter grade for the next writing assignment. This is fair to them, since they'll be taking a risk in trying this; it should also inspire nearly all of the class to sign on.
2. Divide the class into the following sections:
   1. Those who will commit to using GWave and writing a certain amount every day.
   2. Those will use GWave, but not commit to writing a certain amount every day.
   3. Those who will use a Google Doc (shared with me) to compose their papers. (After all, there might be no substantial difference between GDoc and GWave for this purpose--or is there?)
   4. Depending on how many people sign up, I might assign some to compose their papers normally.
      
   
   
3. Next, well over a week ahead of time, I'll have to send GWave invitations to those participating in that part of the study. Since I don't want to use all of my invites, if a lot of students are to use GWave, some of them will have to invite their classmates. So extra time is required.
4. Finally, run the experiment! Then grade the final versions, using the first essay grades as a comparison to see if there are any significant differences, and reflect on any unexpected events during the composition process.

So that's the plan. If this works, I might ask students to collaborate (in this class or another) on a GWave for, say, group presentations or other work.

Watch this space for updates!

"Student-Centered" and Human-Centered

You may have noticed that a lot of recent academic job posts ask for "student-centered" teachers/teaching. But like other frequently-used terms (e.g., Socratic teaching), I think this term can be overused. What does it really mean? It certainly doesn't mean always pleasing the students, though I try to do that when it doesn't interfere with actual learning or higher obligations.

One danger, I think, is that the phrase "student-centered" presupposes--without defining--a concept of "student." And that word's significance differs from person to person. Ask nine teachers to define student, you'll get nine answers--and ten if one went to Harvard.

So what does "student" mean to me, to you, to us, especially to teachers?

The most important aspect, IMHO, is that students are, like us, human. Student-centered teaching should first of all be human-centered teaching.

Aristotle says that all humans desire to know. From this, one would expect that our students would show up in class Monday through Friday bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ready to sponge up our pearls of wisdom. No?

If they fail to do so--if humans fail to react as we should expect humans to--then perhaps it is because we have, in some partial measure and inadvertently, failed to treat them as human?

When I first set out to hold students' attention, I committed a common teacher error: I put on a show. I had a teacher-centered classroom. Student-centered teaching aims to correct this error, and rightfully. I learned my lesson--but not, at first, the solution.

My next attempt was to use flashy but organized teaching aids: PowerPoint, multimedia, etc. And in the proper hands, these tools work wonders. But the proper hands must first be properly educated. Aristotle's aphorism is useful here: students don't want to be entertained--or merely entertained, at least in the classroom--they want to learn. All glitz and no learning is like all frosting and no food. Monday through Friday. Year after year.

For me, the breakthrough--the one which ensured that I enjoyed my classes simply because my students actually enjoyed my classes--came in realizing that students care about the ultimate questions. Perhaps they don't know it. Yet the desire to know who one is, what being human means, what truly matters, and similar questions wait to be sparked in them as much as in us. Perhaps more than in us--or else why do so many of us teachers fail to connect our subjects to these larger issues? (I am speaking from my own experience: though some of my teachers framed the course content in larger contexts, most did not. Your experience may differ.)

A first-class class, therefore, reveals to the student with crystal clarity why what they are supposed to learn matters. Not today, not tomorrow, but forever. And also why the student matters--today, tomorrow, and forever. To light that proverbial spark of learning, we must expose the student to the eternal flame, the deep thirst within that makes drinking the dew of knowledge worthwhile.

Happy teaching!

The Doctor is IN!

On December 14th, 2009, I successfully defended my dissertation. Now, as I and my colleagues look for a new life in the uncharted waters of professorship, I begin to muse upon the challenges of this new direction life is taking us.

In particular, I'm interested in a number of things that you might be, too. They are, in no particular order:

• Networking--useful, and also a lot of fun.
• Teaching--serving my students, cooperating with my colleagues.
• Research--currently focusing on the relationship between epic and religious ritual.
• Finding a job--especially, but not limited to, teaching composition and/or literature at a Catholic institution or program in the Midwest.
• Professional development--we can all use improvement, can't we?

Now, just because I get the initials "Dr." in front of my name doesn't mean I think I have all the answers--far from it! After eleven years in higher education, though, there's a good chance that I can find someone who does. Or that I can at least pose the question in an interesting way.

But from there onward, it's a journey into the unknown.

So let's get started, shall we?