The Becker Blog

I am teaching a first year communications course for engineers. Most of the students seem to be making some real progress. As always, a few need very little guidance from me and others won’t listen to what I say no matter what.

I keep hearing about how tech-savvy today’s students are, and I have to say, I’m REALLY not seeing it. Many, if not MOST of the kids in my classes really don’t know very much about modern technology, and they FOR SURE don’t understand how most of it works. I am accustomed to working with Computer Science students who are, of course, at the extreme end of the geek-pool when it comes to tech so perhaps I’ve been lulled into a false sense of complacency.

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5 Lessons Professors Can Learn From Video Games -

Technology – The Chronicle of Higher Education

Nice article.

via 5 Lessons Professors Can Learn From Video Games – Technology – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The author suggests we might be in the “third level” of video games inside the ivory tower, one where people are

recognizing that games are often not the best tools in an educational setting, but when they are, they should carefully balance substance and sport.

At that level, it’s possible to deconstruct video games, looking for takeaways that professors can try in their own teaching, whether or not they ever pick up a joystick or click “play.”

I have some comment son each of those parts:

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Students failing because of Twitter, texting – Canada – Canoe.ca

“Thirty per cent of students who are admitted are not able to pass at a minimum level,” says Ann Barrett, managing director of the English language proficiency exam at Waterloo University.

“What has happened in high school that they cannot pass our simple test of written English, at a minimum?” she asks.

Even those with good marks out of Grade 12, so-called elite students, “still can’t pass our simple test,” she says.

via Students failing because of Twitter, texting – Canada – Canoe.ca.

I’m not really surprised. I’ve been teaching a technical writing course to 1st year engineers and many of them have poorer writing skills than my son did when he was 10. To be fair, some are quite good, but many (more than half, I’d say) are careless with their writing and proofreading.

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OK, this is just too much fun.

http://www.globalgamejam.org/

Live video can be found at http://www.globalgamejam.be/livewall/

The local Calgary site begins at about 4 PM today; others have started, of course, as the various time zones join up.

The U of C is going through another round of DEEP cuts.

The primary reason for the cuts, says Weingarten, is poor market performance caused by the economic downturn which has adversely affected return on endowment funds used to support various programs and the Universities Academic Pension Fund.

The endowment fund has shrunk by $40.4 million, since hitting a high last year of $411 million.

Thanks Mark for once again posting something that makes me think (and that gives me an opportunity to tough on a favorite topic: the importance of teaching quality in higher ed).

Boredom vs. Failure Part 2: The New Demographic

From Mark’s post: “What’s striking about these four results is the huge difference for students with low knowledge.  Doing it right matters a lot for these students.  What’s also striking is how it doesn’t make much difference for the high knowledge students.  In fact, in the first experiment, the low-knowledge students even did better than the high knowledge students when given integrated text plus illustrations.”

I’ve always assumed that the good students don’t really need us – they will do fine no matter what. They possess good & varied adaption & learning skills so it doesn’t matter if the instructor is boring, selfish, stuck in the 19th century, or just plain stupid. The good students will learn what they need to. That’s why it’s not much of an accomplishment when a school only lets in the best and they all succeed (well, duh). Student success in those schools says very little about the teaching quality of the faculty.

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Apparently it is in China – if you get caught.

Chinese academia ghost-writing ‘widespread’

This BBC article claims that “More than $100m (£63m) changes hands in China every year for ghost-written academic papers, according to research by a Chinese university.”

As I see it, the only thing that really distinguishes this crime from the all too common practice of claiming authorship for everything one’s own grad students do is that the grad students weren’t yours.

There are plenty of academics who routinely add their names to everything their grad students publish. I personally know a science department where a good number of the faculty get most of their publications without ever having to write a word. Yet THAT practice rarely gets questioned. WHY? They didn’t do the work. They merely paid to support the grad student. If I follow that same logic, does that mean any publication I get while being paid by the university must bear the name of the person who approves my paycheque?

I realize there is huge pressure to publish, but the truth is, if people stopped bowing to that pressure and actually claimed credit ONLY for the work they actually did, then the problem would sort itself out as most of the so-called “high fliers” do very little of their own work or writing.

Academia needs to get back to real, honest work. Honestly is supposed to be our most cherished value. Most academics these days are as corrupt as the students they claim to despise – you know those who cheat their way through school.

If Academics actually practiced what they preached, we’d be far better off.

My husband and I had dinner with a friend last night whom we both like and respect a great deal. He’s a decent, smart man and we thoroughly enjoyed spending time with him. We talked about many things, among them our attitudes about the human use of animals. My friend is a vegan, and we’re not. I had no intention of trying to convince my friend to change his ways, and I am pretty sure he had no intention of changing mine. We are all the sorts of people who think deeply about things and do not make lifestyle decisions like what to eat or not eat without thinking about what that might mean.

In many ways our lives are very different – my friend lives in New York City and I live on a farm nestled in the eastern foothills of the Canadian Rockies. I didn’t ask, but I don’t think my friend has any pets or other animals who share his life. I have many animals, most of which I use in one way or another. I adore my animals and would find a life without them impoverished indeed. However, (and here’s the rub) sometimes, I eat one of my animals.

I struggle with the moral issues involved and so I continued to think about this after dropping our friend off at his hotel. My husband and I talked about it on the way home. I thought about it while falling asleep and again in the morning. I try very hard to be logical and reasonable in my arguments. I like to think of myself as an ethical person (I gave up a 23 year career over principles). I suspect I may not have succeeded in being entirely logical on this one. But neither did my friend.

This morning, I found this in the New York Times, so I thought I’d respond. I suspect my friend subscribes to some of the arguments made below, but I don’t know if he subscribes to all of them. In any case this is not directed at him specifically. Rather it is an attempt to pull the camera back to show more of the picture. It ’s more complicated than people want to think. Unless you are prepared to live in the wilderness completely off the grid, being a vegan, even a strict ethical one, does not spare you from having animals killed on your behalf.  Fewer to be sure, but they still die for you.

permalink: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/opinion/22steiner.html

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Now, I’m a big fan of Serious Games, but I’m also quite sure that this is one of those cases where more is not necessarily better. What is important is balance. I suppose it may be difficult to make sure students have exposure to natural things too, given that they are in Manhattan (http://q2l.org/), but I am quite convinced that ultimately, a lack of connection with nature and living things will have far more negative consequences than spending too much time online.

I’m talking negative on an epic scale.

Here is the article:

New York Launches Public School Curriculum Based on Playing Games

Saw this on the New York Times (Opinion) today:

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/education-degrees-and-teachers-pay/?8ty&emc=ty

Do Teachers Need Education Degrees?

By The Editors

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

In a Room for Debate forum in June on the value of liberal arts master’s degrees, one group of readers — teachers and education administrators — generally agreed a higher degree was well worth the investment. They pointed out that pay and promotion in public schools were tied to the accumulation of such credentials and credits, specifically from colleges of education.

But current teacher training has a large chorus of critics, including prominent professors in education schools themselves. For example, the director of teacher education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Katherine Merseth, told a conference in March that of the nation’s 1,300 graduate teacher training programs, only about 100 were doing a competent job and “the others could be shut down tomorrow.” And Obama administration officials support a shift away from using master’s degrees for pay raises, and a shift toward compensating teachers based on children’s performance.

Should the public schools reduce the weight they give to education school credentials in pay and promotion decisions? Is this happening already, and, if so, what is replacing the traditional system for compensating teachers?

Here are my initial thoughts:

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