tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31956648238854050752024-03-21T13:23:19.652-04:00Speculative Dictionlanguage, politics, educationaesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-28986834319970481772011-08-22T08:19:00.000-04:002011-08-22T08:24:43.560-04:00Moving "House": Follow the Link to Bloggy Goodness!Hello there, readers! It's time for a short update about the status of Speculative Diction, the blog. The bad news is that shortly, there will be no more new entries posted to this site. The good news, however, is that Speculative Diction will now be hosted by University Affairs, the Canadian national postsecondary news publication. <a href="http://www.universityaffairs.ca/speculative-diction/">Please follow this link for regular updates</a> containing my usual commentary and crankiness on the subject of higher education policy, pedagogy, the academic profession and more!
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<br />--Melonie
<br />aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-48738736657163749362011-08-16T15:10:00.003-04:002011-08-16T15:26:01.704-04:00Shameful self-promotion vs. MeritocracyOn August 4th, an <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=416987&c=1">article called "How not to get left on the shelf"</a> by Dale Sawak was posted on the Times Higher Education web site. In it, the author argued that if academic authors want their books to be read by a wider audience (or at all), they'll need to engage in some self-promotion.
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<br />The article produced an incensed response from some readers. In order to understand why, we need to translate its thesis into Stereotypical Academic Logic. Once translated, the argument looks something like this: Sawak tells researchers who already see themselves as successful (i.e., they have written and published books), that their success is actually limited (by audience, no less; practically an accusation of elitism). He also suggests that in order to achieve "real" success, authors should engage in an activity that's disdained in academe--<span style="font-style: italic;">advertising oneself</span>.
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<br />A disclaimer here: part of my research is about the spread of entrepreneurialism and promotionalism in university governance and practice; I wrote my MA thesis in sociolinguistics, and it was a critique of internal public relations at a university. I'm not particularly keen on the idea of having to be a competitive, "marketable" academic, or that we should be forced to participate in phoney promotional activities (I don't think they work anyway) or in the kinds of performance assessments that measure "impact" with a variety of suspect statistics. But as with so many issues, there are elements of self-promotion that relate positively to doing a good job as an academic, rather than buying in to neo-liberal market-oriented self-reformation.
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<br />In all fairness there's an underlying critical point in Sawak's article, which is that self-promotion is something that <span style="font-style: italic;">all</span> very successful academics engage in--whether or not they acknowledge it. No-one can argue that Judith Butler, <a href="http://youtu.be/_VdFtb4zNXE">Slavoj Žižek</a> and Noam Chomsky don't "put themselves out there" (though usually the term <span style="font-style: italic;">public intellectual</span> is applied). The suspicion of self-promotion is also part of the reason that blogging and other social media activities are often dismissed by academic colleagues and peers.
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<br />Not only are self-promoters more successful, but so are graduate students whose supervisors "push" their students' work actively. Ever wonder how so-and-so managed to get that article published in a good journal, or a helpful research assistant job, or an item that showcases their work on the faculty web page? Committee members and supervisors can help with this too, behind the scenes, and it's in their interests because your success reflects back upon them.
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<br />While the necessity of at least some degree of self-promotion may seem obvious, given the academic fear and loathing of public relations (where PR is often conflated with advertising and/or marketing or even lying and propaganda) it's actually a tough admission for professors to make.
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<br />The admission needs to be made, though, because it further disrupts the assumption made by many that meritocracy is the (only) engine powering the university. Passing on advice about appropriate networking and promotional skills should be a part of mentoring undergraduate and graduate students: one needs to know how to put one's best foot forward, simply because it opens up opportunities. As frustrating as this may seem, it's true that ideas don't tend to be recognised due to "merit" and nothing else, just as great scholarly partnerships and collaborations don't develop out of thin air. You need to meet people and they need to see your work.
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<br />Female academics, in particular, are vulnerable to the trap in which they remain silent about their own work and its value--as Lee Skallerup Bessette <a href="http://collegereadywriting.blogspot.com/2011/08/bad-female-academic-shameless-self.html?spref=tw">writes in her blog post, "Shameless self promotion"</a>. Women in general are less likely to claim expertise, which can be a detriment when it comes to succeeding in an academic career and a public profile. Female graduate students are more likely to suffer from "Imposter Syndrome" and to lack the sense of self-value that helps them develop crucial professional networks.
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<br />Granted, there's definitely some promotion-related career advice I would consider to be cynical and unproductive. For example <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2011/07/18/essay_on_importance_of_self_promotion_for_young_faculty_members">in this article</a> the authors assert that early-career academics must cite important scholars in the field even when their work is only "tangentially" related. I doubt this is necessary for every paper, and I'd agree with some commenters that most authors can see through a meaningless reference and many will dismiss it. Then again it's also true that we don't live in an academic utopia; some scholars <span style="font-style: italic;">do</span> want their egos stroked. If you're willing to engage in that, then take the advice.
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<br />If you still find distasteful the idea of engaging in<span style="font-style: italic;"> some</span> form of self-promotion, think of it this way: no-one can assess the "merit" of your work unless they have some exposure to it and to you.
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<br />Another reason is that you're <span style="font-style: italic;">already</span> producing PR about yourself. You re-write your own CV and cover letters, send copies of your papers for review and revision, organise and/or participate in conferences; you're concerned about your reputation and the impression you make on peers because it affects your work prospects. There's nothing wrong with all this--it's not "beneath you" to consider and engage in these things and and there's no professional penalty for it (quite the opposite). Expand your idea of "public relations" to focus on the broader idea of "relations", relationships, and it's clear that much of our communication is a part of that process; stop assuming that PR is "evil", and you'll realise it's necessary (as well as omnipresent).
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<br />As a final note, I'll talk a little bit about this blog. Did I set out to "self-promote" by writing it? Frankly, no, that wasn't the goal; I didn't start blogging because I thought it would be "good for my career". I wanted the other benefits of blogging such as dialogue with peers, sharing of thoughts and commentary, and a space to "mess around" with ideas that haven't yet made it into my formal academic writing.
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<br />The blog has led to many great conversations and connections, but it's also had a much wider readership than I ever imagined (though still fairly narrow-!). Blogging here led to guests post at <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university_of_venus">University of Venus</a> on the Inside Higher Ed site (I'm now a regular contributing writer there); it led to one of my posts <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2011/jul/13/cultural-conflict-higher-education-internationalisation">appearing in the Guardian UK online</a>, and to another post receiving <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=417009#.TkENbfu6Htw.twitter">attention in the Times Higher Education</a>. While those aren't the peer-reviewed academic publications that are required for a career as a professor, they're valuable for me especially in that they relate directly to my field of research, and will reach much broader audiences than my own blog.
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<br />Let's try to avoid allowing self-promotion to be one of the "dirty secrets" of the academy, something to be sneered at or reserved for the egotistical and vainglorious, something that "real" academics don't do; after all, what's a book launch for?
<br />aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-54826053609703575082011-08-14T12:50:00.005-04:002011-08-21T21:41:33.066-04:00Tutorial Time: Fun with Gender & MediaLast year I was a teaching assistant for a course called "Sexuality, gender and society". Since I scored the same assignment again this year, I've already started planning for the kinds of activities and discussions we might be able to have in tutorial.
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<br />I wanted to make sure I had a solid list of interesting resources for the class, the kind of stuff that students might "get into" more as it provides examples and context for them and connects more to familiar experiences--shorter commentaries, videos and other media, blog posts, web discussions and so on. I'm thinking about emailing the class once a week with these additional links.
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<br />Here's a list of some of the resources I may end up using, depending on the syllabus. Most of these could be fitted into more than on category, so they could be used in various contexts for the course.
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gender essentialism and norms...</span>
<br />..."<a href="http://youtu.be/LS37SNYjg8w">Women, know your limits</a>" from British comedy show <span style="font-style: italic;">Harry Enfield & Friends</span> skewers ideals of feminine decorum and passivity (and the assumption of superior male intelligence!).
<br />..From the blog Sociological Images, a nice piece on <a href="http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/10/17/performing-masculinity/">performing masculinity</a>, and one on "<a href="http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/03/18/mccoy-crisps-tells-us-how-to-be-a-real-man/">McCoy Crisps: Men are stupid, shallow, sexist sport-o-holics</a>." Advertising at its least flattering!
<br />...An episode of <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/220/testosterone">This American Life</a> about testosterone. What's it like when your body stops producing testosterone, or when your T levels increase suddenly?
<br />...The "nurture" side of the debate, research showing that <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/15/girls-boys-think-same-way">gender differences are due to socialisation</a>.
<br />...A relatively recent article about Toronto parents who decided to <a href="http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/babiespregnancy/babies/article/995112--parents-keep-child-s-gender-secret">keep their child's gender secret</a>.
<br />...<a href="http://www.mybodygallery.com/index.html">My Body Gallery</a> blog highlights "what real women look like" by displaying users' photos of themselves.
<br />..<a href="http://malikatv.blogspot.com/">Malika's Indian Trangender Blog</a>, and a documentary called <a href="http://youtu.be/zWGRi99cVHo"><span style="font-style: italic;">Middlesexes</span></a> about trans experiences and issues; a news piece about how Australia is the <a href="http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/03/11/australia-is-first-to-recognise-non-specified-gender">first country to recognise a "non-specified" gender</a>.
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Pop culture...</span>
<br />...The <a href="http://www.feministfrequency.com/2009/11/the-real-reason-guys-should-hate-twilight/">real reasons why</a> guys should hate on <span style="font-style: italic;">Twilight</span>.
<br />...<a href="http://youtu.be/Qe3WGtaWA84"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Celluloid Closet</span></a>, a fantastic documentary about the history of queer representation in film.
<br />...<a href="http://youtu.be/RZwM3GvaTRM">Buffy vs. Edward Cullen</a>: guess who clobbers whom in this little encounter? A classic face-off between stereotype-busting Buffy and Mr. Sullen Cullen!
<br />...A <a href="http://www.leakylounge.com/index.php?showtopic=63549">threaded discussion</a> about female characters in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Harry Potter</span> series; and a blog post on "<a href="http://www.canonballblog.com/?p=2732">The women of the Harry Potter universe</a>". For good measure, here's a video of Hermione Granger, another atypical female character, <a href="http://youtu.be/dAadgCJQdMM">telling Draco Malfoy what's what</a>.
<br />...Music videos: last year in one tutorial we had an interesting discussion about this, so I'd like to bring it back and ask students to bring in their own examples. The one I used before was <a href="http://youtu.be/pwnefUaKCbc">Janelle Monae's "Tightrope"</a> in which she draws on the aesthetics of 60's Motown and 50's rocker Little Richard.
<br />...A <a href="http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/11/05/black-intellectuals-and-artists-on-sexism-in-hip-hop/">discussion by a group of Black intellectuals and artists</a>, about misogyny in Hip-Hop.
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gender & work...</span>
<br />...A chart (made from a <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/08/05/georgetown_study_links_college_degree_attainment_to_lifetime_earning_power">report from Georgetown University</a>) showing that women <a href="http://kaysteiger.com/2011/08/05/chart-of-the-day-the-most-depressing-pay-gap-statistic-youve-seen-today/">need a PhD to make as much</a> as men who have a BA.
<br />...At the same time, here's a contrasting article about <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/news/More+wives+earning+husbands/5104584/story.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+UniversityAffairsMediaScan+%28Media+Scan+%7C+University+Affairs%29&utm_content=Google+Reader">Canadian women making more money than their husbands</a>.
<br />...From The Atlantic magazine, "<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/">The end of men</a>" looks at a "reversal" in women's fortunes that could lead to female dominance in powerful positions in the workforce.
<br />...In Sweden, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/europe/10iht-sweden.html?pagewanted=1&src=twt&twt=nytimesglobal">more men are taking paternity leave</a>; and in Japan, male <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2220535/">"Herbivores"</a> eschew high-stress lifestyle choices of their parents.
<br />...Mary Churchill explains why her colleague feels like she <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university_of_venus/i_need_a_wife">"needs a wife"</a>, a great discussion of privilege and gender in the academic workplace, where <a href="http://womenmakenews.com/content/story/price-paid-women-who-serve-gender-disparities-academia">gender disparities persist</a>.
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Women in science & technology...</span>
<br />...Women in science <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/08/09/female_science_faculty_much_more_likely_than_male_counterparts_to_wish_they_had_more_children">don't have as many children as they'd like</a>.
<br />..."<a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Female-Science/65922/">Why Female Science Professor</a>?" in which the author describes her experiences as a female scientist. I brought this to class last year and it was well-received.
<br />...Womens' continuing <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/08/04/qt/new_data_on_stem_gender_gap">under-representation in science</a> and exclusion from pay parity in STEM and <a href="http://www.leaderpost.com/technology/Number+women+tech+fields+falling/5153176/story.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+UniversityAffairsMediaScan+%28Media+Scan+%7C+University+Affairs%29&utm_content=Google+Reader">technology-related fields</a>.
<br />...Articles about the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/business/media/31link.html?_r=3&src=busln">gender gap</a> in <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library_babel_fish/women_and_wikipedia">Wikipedia contributions</a>.
<br />...The Guardian UK reports on the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/nov/21/royal-society-lost-women-scientists">"lost women scientists" of The Royal Society</a>, including Caroline Herschel.
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gender & violence...</span>
<br />...Fulbright Scholar Rumana Manzur of Bangladesh was attacked and blinded <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/06/28/essay_on_tragic_attack_on_university_of_british_columbia_graduate_student">by her husband</a> in June, 2011.
<br />...Article from the BBC: the United Nations has <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7464462.stm">classified rape as a war tactic</a>; and a post from Scarleteen on <a href="http://www.scarleteen.com/article/boyfriend/how_you_guys_thats_right_you_guys_can_prevent_rape">how men can help prevent rape</a>.
<br />...Homophobic violence: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Tyler_Clementi">Tyler Clementi</a> committed suicide "after his sexual encounter with a man in his dorm room was video streamed over the Internet without Clementi's knowledge" by his room-mate. This was one of the suicides by queer youth that prompted the "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Gets_Better_Project">It Gets Better</a>" project.
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Experiences of sexism...</span>
<br />...The blog <a href="http://microaggressions.com/">Microaggressions</a> documents readers' everyday experiences of sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination.
<br />...From <span style="font-style: italic;">Hook and Eye</span> blog, "<a href="http://www.hookandeye.ca/2011/05/this-month-this-semester-in-sexism.html">This month in sexism</a>" provides some examples of sexism in academe.
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gender & history...</span>
<br />..."<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Songs-of-the-Suffragettes/dp/B000S991IK">Songs of the Suffragettes</a>": I was given digital copies of these fabulous old songs, which were "rescued" from vinyl by a friend in Toronto. I think in tutorial we could have a discussion about the songs' lyrics, style, and political context.
<br />...Episode "<a href="http://youtu.be/wL5CviNAhnk">The Damsel</a>" from documentary series <span style="font-style: italic;">Terry Jones' Medieval Lives</span>. This is an excellent little piece on women in Medieval Europe.
<br />...An <a href="http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/gender/2011/08/11/one-of-the-cleverest-and-oddest-women-in-europe/">article about Clemence Royer</a>, the female economist who translated Darwin's <span style="font-style: italic;">Origin of Species</span> into French.
<br />...An account of 19th century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, in "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSi4Y0UgZLE&playnext=1&list=PLA6305C0829DE9C51">Victoria and her Sisters</a>", an episode of Simon Schama's <span style="font-style: italic;">History of Britain</span>.
<br />...A <a href="http://www.harpyness.com/2011/08/10/harpy-hall-of-fame-and-all-around-bamf-nancy-wake/">short piece on Nancy Wake</a>, who was a spy in World War II; at great personal risk, "Wake committed herself to fighting Nazis after she interviewed Adolf Hitler in Vienna in 1933."
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gender & education...</span>
<br />...A blog post from Macleans has a <a href="http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2010/02/02/the-women-studies-debate-goes-on/">discussion of the animosity </a>towards Women's Studies in Canada.
<br />...In the US, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5417475/Women-now-out-number-and-out-perform-men-at-all-universities-study-finds.html">the UK</a> and Canada, <a href="http://www.changemag.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/May-June%202010/where-guys-full.html">women have outpaced men in university enrollments</a> and achievement. This had fed into a more general concern about <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/12/20/2010-12-20_boy_oh_boy_is_the_world_in_trouble.html">boys' literacy</a> and the <a href="http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2010/10/18/are-we-raising-our-boys-to-be-underachieving-men/">"success" of males</a> in the education system (and <a href="http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_single_young_men.html">in life in general</a>).
<br />...A <a href="http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/fyi/hiring-based-solely-on-merit-so-naturally-theres-uproar-94646589.html">male author dismisses critiques</a> of Canada's funding for international researchers, an interesting example of the discourse of meritocracy.
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<br />I hope you enjoyed the list (which is really just a brainstorm); if you have anything to add, please leave suggestions in the comments! In particular I'm looking for more resources on gender and race--especially indigenous issues--and masculinities/examples involving men (students requested this last year).
<br />aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-83427107718042348542011-07-31T20:00:00.003-04:002011-08-05T13:05:41.982-04:00The Month in Higher Ed: July 2011It's that time again--time for a short PSE round-up for the past month!<br /><br />In Canada, a great deal of attention was paid to the most recent <a href="http://www.stic-csti.ca/eic/site/stic-csti.nsf/eng/00056.html">State of the Nation</a> report released at the end of June by the <a href="http://www.stic-csti.ca/eic/site/stic-csti.nsf/eng/Home">Science, Technology and Innovation Council</a>. A number of articles addressed the <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/canada-slips-further-in-innovation-rankings/article2077788/">"innovation deficit"</a> that Canada faces, which is seen as an impediment to Canada's progress in the knowledge economy. And of course, explicit connections were made to <a href="http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/07/05/we-need-a-culture-of-innovation/">Canadian universities (and university graduates)</a> and <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Canadian+talent+pool+deep+overlooked+study+finds/5063437/story.html">their role</a> in this form of economic development.<br /><br />One interesting point I want to mention here is that Canada really does have a (relatively) long history of producing "reports" and "commissions" on the subject of R&D and what would now be called "technology transfer" or in some cases, "knowledge translation". <a href="http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0007216">For decades</a> the critique has been put forward that Canadian business simply isn't innovative enough, or that Canadian businesses don't take enough risks. The Lamontagne commission in the late 1960s/early 1970s brought attention to the same problem. Government programs and policies have apparently failed to make a difference, as <a href="http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/06/29/william-watson-endless-folly-of-innovation-policy/">this article</a> discusses.<br /><br />Canadian Aboriginal education also <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ottawa-failing-natives-on-education-child-welfare-advocate-says/article2096853/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+UniversityAffairsMediaScan+%28Media+Scan+%7C+University+Affairs%29&utm_content=Google+Reader">received attention</a> this past month in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Assembly of First Nations in Moncton, New Brunswick; the Vancouver Sun ran a series of <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Lack+education+must+tackled/5070420/story.html">editorials</a> <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Funding+first+nations+education/5087809/story.html">on the issue</a>, and these as well as a <a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1008081--native-grads-would-soar-if-learning-gap-closed-activist-says?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+UniversityAffairsMediaScan+%28Media+Scan+%7C+University+Affairs%29&utm_content=Goog">number of articles</a> <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Education+aboriginal+children+must+priority/5063383/story.html">took up</a> <a href="http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/07/20/on-moving-beyond-residential-schools-overcoming-cynicism-and-trusting-the-tories/">Shawn Atleo</a>'s criticisms on the subject. Since Canada's indigenous groups--First Nations, Métis, and Inuit--have the lowest proportional enrolment and graduation in PSE nationally, the criticisms are well-founded.<br /><br />In the UK, the <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/home/">Sutton Trust</a> released a report, "<a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/news/news/four-schools-and-one-college-win-more-places-at-oxbridge/">Degrees of Success</a>", that examined undergraduate admissions at Oxford and Cambridge universities. The report showed that "[f]our schools and one college sent more students to Oxbridge over three years than 2,000 schools and colleges across the UK". These results were taken by a number of commentators as a sign that accessibility in the UK is <a href="http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6095372">still heavily skewed</a> by <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/neilobrien1/100096137/the-real-oxbridge-problem-state-school-pupils-dont-even-bother-to-apply/">socioeconomic class</a> at the primary and secondary levels. In other words, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14069516">it matters <span style="font-style: italic;">where </span>you go to secondary school</a>, more so than whether you receive high A-level grades. These critiques are all the more potent at a time when PSE policy in the UK is being radically re-vamped along marketised lines, with most universities raising tuition close to the full £9,000 now allowed by the government.<br /><br />And lastly, as most readers will be aware the United States has been undergoing <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8673728/US-debt-crisis-the-questions-and-answers.html">a political and economic crisis</a> that's reached fever pitch as the month of July draws to a close. <a href="http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/06/whats-happening-debt-ceiling-explained">The US debt limit must be lifted</a> <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/26/debt-ceiling-chart_n_867631.html#s284086&title=Explaining_The_US">by Tuesday, August 2nd</a>, and the Republicans seem to be taking this time to blackmail the President; indeed, it looks like they've created a situation where Obama must take responsibility for debts racked up by his predecessor/s, whilst ceding to Republican demands in the moment and ultimately accepting that his chances of re-election have been reduced to, practically, nil.<br /><br />In the midst of this maelstrom, the <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/07/27/what_will_happen_to_student_aid_if_debt_limit_is_reached">Pell Grant program</a> (among <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/07/13/possible_threat_to_subsidized_student_loans_in_debt_talks">other initiatives</a>) has been <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/07/20/qt/senators_and_students_rally_to_preserve_pell_grants">on the chopping block</a> in various versions of the debt deal that have been proposed thus far. Though the Pell program is <a href="http://higheredwatch.newamerica.net/blogposts/2011/a_temporary_albeit_tenuous_reprieve_for_pell_grants-55499">so far preserved</a>, federal student aid programs have already been <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/07/18/increased_student_loan_interest_rates_to_reduce_deficit_and_probably_not_expand_grants">targeted for "savings"</a> in the past and this is likely to continue as cost-cutting measures are introduced.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">UPDATE</span> from the Chronicle of Higher Ed: "<a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/fate-of-student-aid-in-debt-ceiling-deal-still-unclear/34973">Debt-Ceiling Deal Provides $17-Billion for Pell Grants</a>".<br /><br />-----------------<br /><br />As a side note, my short contribution to <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/06/28/essay_on_tragic_attack_on_university_of_british_columbia_graduate_student">University of Venus piece</a> on UBC Fulbright Scholar Rumana Manzur was re-published in the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2011/jul/13/cultural-conflict-higher-education-internationalisation">Guardian UK online</a>, on July 13th. This month we also heard part of the sad conclusion to Rumana's story, which is that <a href="http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2011/07/18/ubc-student-will-not-regain-sight-doctors/">she has been permanently blinded</a> by the wounds inflicted on her by her husband. You can make a donation to help Rumana, using <a href="https://rumana.givecentre.com/donate/11">this web page</a>.aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-69490763934029160612011-07-19T19:57:00.002-04:002011-07-20T09:41:06.987-04:00Know Your ValueSummer is “conference season” in higher education, a time when many professors, graduate students and administrators find themselves hastily packing the smallest possible suitcase in order to spend three or four days in some remote and/or obscure location.<br /><br />Conferences can be a great academic opportunity and are presented to graduate students as such. You can meet others and share ideas, as well as giving and receiving feedback and discovering new possibilities for collaboration. But to be realistic, conferences are also an <span style="font-style: italic;">expensive</span> (and therefore a somewhat exclusive) opportunity. Attendees must pay for travel, accommodation, and of course the ubiquitous registration fees. In the past I was able to do presentations in the U.K. and in Washington D.C., and at other conferences within Canada, only because I had a federal grant supporting my studies. These were incredibly rewarding experiences that I wouldn’t have been able to access otherwise.<br /><br />The high cost of conferences is an example of the strangely skewed economy of the academy. For many graduate students, it’s an expense that is beyond their limited budgets. Yet there is little hope of finding an academic job without attending and presenting at conferences during the course of the Ph.D. Grad students aren’t paid for the time we spend writing conference presentations, or for the presentations themselves; nor are we reimbursed for the travel costs. It’s all considered part of the investment we make in our own careers.<br /><br />In fact, budding academics do a lot of unpaid work, including peer reviewing, writing book reviews, and producing journal articles (we even hand over copyright to the journals, <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Tired-of-Writing-for-No-Money/127767">who then profit from our labour</a>). It’s considered both a privilege and a necessity to have something published, since reviewed publications are another “must” in the process of building an academic career. While we are paid to teach, that’s the work that tends to lack prestige and is not considered as helpful for long-term career development.<br /><br />What this means is that in graduate school we get used to working for nothing, even as we’re expected to invest heavily in expensive professional development activities. By attending conferences, we pay for the opportunity to present our work to our (future) peers, who are the primary “gatekeepers” to academe. This system helps to perpetuate privilege because only “those who have afforded to work for free will get jobs. The vicious circle is maddening” (Ernesto Priego, <a href="http://storify.com/qui_oui/academic-careers-privilege">July 2, 2011, Twitter</a>).<br /><br />Thus in spite of increasing accessibility in terms of enrolments, graduate education still tends to be <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2011/jun/24/postgraduate-education-fees-increase?CMP=twt_gu">stratified by socioeconomic class</a> (and plagued by high attrition rates). Who can afford to spend time on publication papers and conference proposals and travel, when they must earn money for tuition and rent?* For grad students, especially those from under-privileged circumstances, this can be a trap; and the assumed, eventual “payoff” is now less available than ever as tenure track hires decrease and <a href="http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2011/06/adjuncts_and_the_devalued_phd.html">low-paying contract teaching</a> becomes the norm for an ever-greater proportion of new Ph.Ds.<br /><br />While all this may seem “normal” to those working within <span style="font-style: italic;">academe</span>, just try explaining the conference system, for example, to someone who’s completely unfamiliar with the way academic careers work. My mother has often asked “when are they going to start paying you to go to these things?”. Viewed from this angle, it’s no surprise that the “investment” in graduate education, specifically the Ph.D, can seem like an illogical one (in spite of all the non-material benefits)—or even a “raw deal”, as many <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/The-Big-Lie-About-the-Life-of/63937">other commentators</a> have framed it already.<br /><br />The “academic economy” I described may have made more sense in the now-distant past when tenure-track jobs were more readily available, and when publishing was something you could leave until after graduation. But permanent-track professors actually don’t really do these things (publishing, conferences, and so on) for “free”. They earn a stable salary and they receive institutional support for research-related activities, which are considered part of the job. On the other hand, graduate students and early-career academics—particularly those who find themselves doing a lot of contract teaching or other part-time work—are less likely to have the time and resources to fully develop their CVs; and as the academic job market has tightened, the bar has been raised in terms of the level of professionalisation required.<br /><br />It matters how students “get ahead” in graduate school because the most successful Ph.D students go on to become faculty who help carry forward the university as an institution. If the academic profession becomes a “labour of love” for all but the most elite students and professors, what are we saying about the worth of our education system and our concern for diversity and accessibility within it? What example are we setting for future students (and potential professors)—<a href="http://collegereadywriting.blogspot.com/2011/06/who-will-be-our-future-professors.html">who will they be</a>?<br /><br />The contemporary university appears to undervalue the skills, talents, and education of many grad students, rewarding only those committed to an extremely narrow track of professional development and willing and able to make the (material) investments necessary to pursue it. Meanwhile, in other contexts our Ph.D-related experience is much sought after. My recent experience in a career course** has been somewhat eye-opening in this respect. While all members of the group are Ph.D candidates or graduates, we each had a hard time coming up with lists of our “skills” because we’re so used to taking our own capacities for granted. Yet once “translated”, our collective experience and expertise was impressive, and applicable to many of the most interesting positions turning up in job searches.<br /><br />My point is not that we should do nothing for free, or that we should all leave the academic profession for higher-paying jobs in other areas. What I want to emphasise is that many graduate students have little sense of the worth of their contributions beyond the logic of the academic system (and this has psychological effects, too). While it may no longer lead to a full-time, permanent faculty job, the PhD is not a devalued degree; it’s only under-valued in the academic marketplace, because desirable jobs are scarce.<br /><br />Because academe presents itself as a meritocracy, often those who “fail” tend to blame themselves for it. But “pure” <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myth-of-academic-meritocracy.html">meritocracy is a myth</a>. This is why knowing your own value means understanding not just <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-2-assessing-your-qualifications.html">what you have to offer</a> in multiple contexts, but also that you have real choices, that there are fruitful possibilities, and that given the kinds of sacrifices involved, <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/blogging-my-responses-to-myths-and.html">“traditional” academic work</a> may not be the best among them.<br /><br />——————————————————————<br /><br />*In Canada, there’s some assistance to be had: students may win non-repayable merit grants and fellowships through provincial and/or federal governments. The university where I’m studying also has some options for reimbursement, through our Graduate Students’ Association, the academic union, the Faculty of Graduate Studies, and sometimes through individual programs and departments. There’s increasing demand for all these different forms of funding, but at least some support is available.<br /><br />**The course is called <a href="http://www.joandjulie.com/conscious-career-course/">“Conscious Careers”</a> and is run by <a href="http://jovanevery.ca/">Jo VanEvery</a> and <a href="http://www.escapetheivorytower.com/">Julie Clarenbach</a>.aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-64249491238293946272011-07-03T17:31:00.005-04:002011-07-04T09:01:00.068-04:00The Month in Higher Ed News (June, 2011)It's been a very busy month, so I thought I'd try something new--a "round-up" of some of the biggest news stories in post-secondary education, and also little bit about what I've been up to (on this site, around the web, and even in the "offline world"!).<br /><br />In <span>Canada</span>, <span>Statistics Canada recently</span> released <span style="font-style: italic;">Education Matters: Insights on Education, Learning and Training in Canada</span>, including the results from the last (not latest--<a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=2010081320433311&mode=print">last</a>) cycle of the <a href="http://www.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-bin/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getSurvey&SDDS=4435&lang=en&db=imdb&adm=8&dis=2">Youth in Transition Survey (YITS)</a>. This was the best available data source for looking longitudinally at Canadian students' post-secondary choices and their post-degree career paths, so the survey's cancellation is a big loss for Canadian PSE policy making.<br /><br />It was a big month for the provincial government in <span>Ontario</span> with many <a href="http://www.academicagroup.ca/top10/stories/13000">education announcements</a> rolled out across the province, including <a href="http://www.tcu.gov.on.ca/eng/postsecondary/backgrounder_may.html">a five-year plan</a> for PSE called <span style="font-style: italic;">Putting Students First</span>. Accessibility will certainly be the emphasis; the government (if re-elected) plans to add another 60,000 student spaces, <a href="http://news.ontario.ca/tcu/en/2011/06/more-spaces-for-graduate-students.html">6,000 of them</a> in <a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1004420--ontario-to-fund-6-000-more-masters-and-phds?bn=1">Masters and Ph.D programs</a>. There were <a href="http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/education/article/1012073--province-gives-post-secondary-600-million-for-new-buildings-and-upgrades">capital funding announcements</a> as well, including a new Engineering building for York, science lab upgrades for UT Mississauga, and a new Liberal Arts building for McMaster (which has had a private donor secured <a href="http://www.mcmaster.ca/opr/html/opr/media/main/NewsReleases/2007/Wilsongiftannouncement.html">since 2007</a>). The government also announced its continued support for the <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/pathways-to-education-expanding-with-285-million-from-ontario/article2077951/">expansion of accessibility initiative Pathways to Education</a>.<br /><br />Graduation season in Canada brought with it a number of articles (and <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/news/todays-paper/devaluation+higher+learning/4931270/story.html">a book</a>) critiquing Canadian universities and <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Degrees+longer+golden+ticket+middle+class/4931269/story.html">questioning</a> of the <a href="http://www.financialpost.com/opinion/columnists/want+fries+with+that+degree/4929713/story.html">value</a> of post-secondary education, particularly in the face of <a href="http://www.financialpost.com/Student+debt+heavy+price/4907997/story.html">rising student debt loads</a>. The current (disheartening) career situation for post-secondary graduates is influenced by generational/historical economic trends, and reflected in the <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/is-our-students-learning/article2062281/">negative news coverage</a> and the ongoing debate about the role of the university in preparing young people for (economic) life.<br /><br />And lastly, <a href="http://nghoussoub.com/2011/05/19/18-nserc-panelists-write-s-fortier-about-the-2011-discovery-grants-competition/">Canadian mathematicians</a> have continued with their <a href="http://nghoussoub.com/2011/05/31/time-to-clean-up-the-mess-at-the-discovery-grants-program/">critiques</a> of <a href="http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Index_eng.asp">NSERC</a>'s key <a href="http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Media-Media/NewsRelease-CommuniqueDePresse_eng.asp?ID=292">Discovery Grants</a> competition, its review system and award allocation results. They argue that while Canada has gone out of its way to establish prestigious faculty positions (such as the Canada Research Chairs and Canada Excellence Research Chairs), the funding arrangements at NSERC leave <a href="http://www.universityaffairs.ca/changes-to-nserc-discovery-grants.aspx">many world-class researchers</a> without <a href="http://nghoussoub.com/2011/06/19/where-is-discoverys-money-going/">adequate resources</a>. NSERC has <a href="http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Professors-Professeurs/Videos-Videos/DG_eng.asp">responded</a>, arguing that the reaction to the funding changes has been mostly positive and that the mathematics community is largely <a href="http://nghoussoub.com/2011/06/18/a-senior-scholar-reports-on-s-fortiers-presentation-at-the-cms-meeting/">to blame for its own misfortune</a>.<br /><br />June also brought two major, and highly anticipated, policy developments overseas--one in the U.S. and one in the U.K.<br /><br />In the United States, the final revised version of the <a href="http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/gainful-employment-regulations">Gainful Employment legislation</a> was released on <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/06/02/new_gainful_employment_rules">Thursday, June 2</a>. This policy is <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/06/03/list_looking_at_gainful_employment_changes">designed to regulate</a> the <a href="http://higheredwatch.newamerica.net/blogposts/2011/gainful_employment_rule_is_out_was_it_worth_the_wait-52329">private, for-profit colleges</a> that often exploit low-income and otherwise disadvantaged students. The for-profit colleges have put a lot of cash and effort into <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/10/22/lobby">lobbying against</a> this legislation. However in spite of its potential benefits, some of the <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/06/13/explaining_the_true_significance_of_gainful_employment_rules">less positive implications</a> of the policy could extend into the rest of the PSE "sector" in the U.S.<br /><br />In the UK, the long-awaited, much-decried government <a href="http://discuss.bis.gov.uk/hereform/white-paper/">White Paper</a> <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=416655">on PSE</a> was released this week to an immediate volley of critiques. Though I have yet to read all 83 pages of it myself, there's <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/29/universities-half-baked-ivy-league">already</a> <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/18897863?story_id=18897863&fsrc=rss">plenty of commentary</a> to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jul/01/higher-education-white-paper-students?CMP=twt_gu">check out</a> as well as existing analyses of the marketisation and privatisation tactics being employed by the U.K. government (including the short one <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/05/market-fail-uk-attempts-at.html">I wrote in May</a>).<br /><br />Also in the UK, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jun/05/new-university-college-humanities-degrees">AC Grayling's</a> new <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jun/05/new-university-college-humanities-degrees">private liberal arts</a> university received huge <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/06/ac-graylings-new-private-univerity-is-odious">amounts of flak</a> from <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/09/ac-grayling-caricatured-british-university-fuming">various quarters</a>, including <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jun/06/ac-grayling-private-university-syllabus">accusations that they'd copied syllabuses</a> (syllabi?) from other institutions.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">...And a little bit closer to home...</span><br /><br />At the beginning of the month I was at Congress in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where I presented at two different associations' conferences. The first presentation was on graduate education (for the <a href="http://www.csa-scs.ca/">Canadian Sociological Association</a>), and the second was about media coverage of the Canada Excellence Research Chairs (CERC), for the <a href="http://www.acc-cca.ca/">Canadian Communication Association</a>. I posted a link to the CERC presentation (on Prezi) <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/05/leading-pack.html">here</a>. Congress was a great opportunity to "bump into" people I already knew, and also to meet some of those Tweeps I hadn't yet seen in person.<br /><br />After more or less successfully using Prezi for the first time at Congress, I wrote two blog posts for Jo Vanevery's blog, <a href="http://jovanevery.ca/presentations-articles-and-writing-to-think/">here</a> and <a href="http://jovanevery.ca/page/3/">here</a>.<br /><br />From June 16 to 18 I attended <span><a href="http://worldviewsconference.com/">WorldViews Conference</a> on Media and Higher</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><span>Education</span>, in Toronto. This month's posts here at Speculative Diction included three live blogs from WorldViews (<a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/06/live-blog-from-worldviews-conference.html">day 1</a>, <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/06/live-blog-continued-worldviews-day-2.html">day 2</a> and <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/06/day-3-live-blog-worldviews-conference.html">day 3</a>) as well as two follow-up posts on universities and the media (you can read them <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/06/universities-and-media-part-1-what-they.html">here</a> and <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/06/universities-media-part-2-why-media.html">here</a> if you haven't yet seen them).<br /><br />Later in the month I was very pleased to be recruited to <a href="http://uvenus.org/">University of Venus</a> <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university_of_venus">blog</a> as a <a href="http://uvenus.org/editorial-collective/melonie-fullick/">regular contributor</a>; soon afterward I collaborated with Lee Skallerup, Afshan Jafar and Mary Churchill, on a <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/06/28/essay_on_tragic_attack_on_university_of_british_columbia_graduate_student">series of written responses</a> to the attack on UBC scholar Rumana Manzur by her husband in Bangladesh.aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-10239309139000865972011-06-23T12:00:00.003-04:002011-06-23T13:34:41.071-04:00Universities & the Media, Part 2: Why the Media MatterYesterday I wrote about some of the <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/06/universities-and-media-part-1-what-they.html">main themes we find in current media coverage</a> of post-secondary education, and of universities in particular. Much of this coverage is highly critical of various aspects of university education and in many cases these criticisms are entirely justified, particularly from the perspective of students and parents, who represent a large audience for education coverage.<br /><br />In spite of highlighting relevant issues, the critical arguments made in the media and in the "crisis literature" (and even in the comment sections of news websites) often <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/is-our-students-learning/article2062281/">seem ill informed</a>. So while there are serious problems with some of the changes happening in universities, the debates that happen in the media don't necessarily contribute to public debate in a productive way.<br /><br />This is why one of the themes throughout the WorldViews conference was the presence or absence of "trust" in the university-media relationship and the ways in which the university can be "mis-represented" when it does not actively seek to inform publics about the nature of its role, its functioning, and its usefulness to society.<br /><br />The assumptions underlying many critiques of post-secondary education tend to be the same assumptions that then frame suggestions for the reform, or renewal, of universities. It's often argued that we must either return to (the best aspects of ) the university of the past, or destroy the institution utterly and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html">begin again</a> with a lighter, <a href="http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2011/04/19/pse-needs-total-overhaul-to-control-costs/">cheaper</a>, more innovative and adaptable model, one that can somehow resolve the weighty tension between <span style="font-style: italic;">democratic</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">meritocratic</span> that has become so much more evident in recent years; all the while becoming <a href="http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Higher+institutions+must+find+ways+costs+report/4644254/story.html#ixzz1Pw2g9C3P">financially self-sustaining</a>.<br /><br />By some commentators, the techno-futuristic (and somewhat libertarian) argument is made that the introduction of new <a href="http://www.changinghighereducation.com/2011/06/as-regular-readers-of-this-blog-know-i-have-been-using-clayton-christensens-concept-of-disruptive-innovation-to-frame-issues.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+changinghighereduca"> disruptive technologies</a>, particularly the Internet and digital media, will force universities to change themselves and offer "value beyond content" as it were--since <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/138/who-needs-harvard.html">all "knowledge" will be available to students on the Web</a>.<br /><br />I think these arguments often ignore or discount the relational nature of education and conflate information with knowledge, assuming that education is the "delivery" of a product. They also reflect commitment to technological determinism, the idea that technologies drive social and cultural change; and they seem to assume that a high degree of individualism is necessary/desirable.<br /><br />One issue I did not hear discussed at the WorldViews conference was whether post-secondary education earns more media attention now than in the past, and whether the nature of the coverage has changed over time. Because this question informs a part of my dissertation, I had it in my mind throughout the conference. I became interested in the question through having done media discourse analysis in the past, and through analysing universities' public relations materials for my MA project.<br /><br />The small amount of preliminary research I've done shows an increase to the amount of coverage universities receive, over a 30-year period. I'll need a much more exhaustive corpus of news coverage from the 1970s and 1980s before I can say for sure, but I think the coverage has probably changed quantitatively as well as qualitatively, and that that's the case then there are plenty of reasonable explanations for the change. (I was focussing only on one university, as well; I'd love to expand that and study the issue in more depth for a larger project.)<br /><br />For one thing, universities now receive far more "exposure" to different publics; more people come into contact with universities than in the past. This is a process that began decades ago and has waxed and waned over time, but at the moment PSE enrolments are higher than ever before and so the student exposure alone has increased significantly. This process of <span style="font-weight: bold;">massification </span>(which I've also discussed here) was mentioned by Philip Altbach at a panel on the second day of the conference, but that was the only time I saw the issue raised explicitly.<br /><br />Not only are there more students in the universities, but these students are paying more for their education. Tuition tends to be on the rise in the U.S. (e.g. in the <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Californias-Public-Colleges/125910">collapsing California system</a>), in Canada, and most notably of late, <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/05/19/minister_s_comments_exacerbate_turmoil_over_british_university_tuition_policy">in the U.K.</a> where the government has raised the tuition cap from about £3,000 to £9,000. <span>The cost of education is being transferred onto the individual even as the value of education to the individual is seen to be in decline.</span><br /><br />This form of <span style="font-weight: bold;">privatisation</span> tends to encourage a consumerist attitude towards education, and changes the dynamic between universities, students, parents and also the media. Rankings tables create comparisons between institutions that allow for informed consumer "choice" (among other things); Macleans magazine designs its yearly university rankings issue as a guide for student/family stakeholders. Because students are assumed to rely on their parents or families for this money, parents too become increasingly invested in the "quality" of university education.<br /><br />Universities have responded to <span style="font-weight: bold;">marketisation</span><span>,</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>and to the privatisation/diversification of their funding sources, by<span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>investing more in strategic communication including advertising and branding, various forms of public relations, and reputation building efforts aimed at different key stakeholder audiences (public/taxpayers, students, parents, the government, granting agencies, donors, alumni and so on). These efforts tend to affect media coverage as well.<br /><br />Why does media coverage matter? With all the trends taken into account, it's clear that government policy, not only in post-secondary education but also in science and technology, intellectual property, and other knowledge policy areas, affects more people than ever. It's therefore more likely to be the subject of heated public debate.<br /><br />Universities need to pay closer attention the ways in which universities and PSE in general are discussed in newspapers, on TV, in magazines, and on the Internet, because these media have a strong hand in setting the terms of that important discussion. This is also where the terms of policy may be set out openly, where members of the voting public begin to make choices about what they support politically.<br /><br />Attitudes and beliefs are circulated, reinforced, and re-formed both in the news and in the discussions that happen that are based on or triggered by media coverage. And what people believe, they tend to act (or vote) on. Universities have ramped up their efforts to present themselves positively, yet coverage of university education has been dominated by overwhelmingly negative discourses.<br /><br />What is the disconnect happening here, and what can universities do to better inform the debate <span style="font-style: italic;">about them</span> that ultimately happens beyond their walls, and beyond their control? How do universities adapt to this fast-paced communicative context wherein critiques and problems are amplified so rapidly? I think this is one of the major challenges not just for universities but for all organisations, at a time when negative messages can easily "go viral" through social media.* Universities, with their deep institutional roots and their immediate connection to young people, may feel this pressure even more. They'll also need to find an answer to it, since the (real and mediated) experiences of today's students will eventually shape the decisions they make about the educational systems of tomorrow.<br /><br />[*I'm interested to see whether universities begin to engage differently with students who already attend, and to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jun/20/universities-social-media-reputation">enlist them in ongoing efforts</a> to build reputation and shape expectations of future students and their parents.]aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-17331361884038663892011-06-22T12:30:00.005-04:002011-06-24T17:33:44.854-04:00Universities and the Media, Part 1: What They Say About UsLast week I attended The <a href="http://worldviewsconference.com/">WorldViews Conference on Media and Higher Education</a>, which ran from the 16th to the 18th of June, 2011 in Toronto. I was able to spend the full three days at the conference, and was lucky to meet face-to-face many of the people with whom I’d already chatted on Twitter (notably, <a href="http://uvenus.org/editorial-collective/mary-churchill/">Mary Churchill</a> and <a href="http://collegereadywriting.blogspot.com/">Lee Skallerup</a>), and whose articles I had read in the press or academic journals.<br /><br />I made a Twitter list of <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/qui_oui/wv2011">conference Tweeps</a>, based on tweets using the <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/search/%23WV2011">#WV2011 tag</a>. I also wrote a live blog during the sessions I attended at the conference; here are the links to my rough notes from <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/06/live-blog-from-worldviews-conference.html">day one</a>, <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/06/live-blog-continued-worldviews-day-2.html">day two</a> and <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/06/day-3-live-blog-worldviews-conference.html">day three</a> of the conference, if you're interested in seeing the content in more detail. There's an archive of tweets from the conference (created by <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/caitlinkealey">Caitlin Kealey</a>) <a href="http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/wv2011">available here</a>.<br /><br />The conference addressed an array of issues including the effects of international rankings on university governance; the role of science journalism; the relationship between academic experts and journalists; the continued under-representation of expertise from women, people of colour, and members of developing/Global South countries; and, of course, the nature of media coverage of higher education.<br /><br />What exactly does current (mainstream) media coverage of post-secondary education look like, and why does this matter?<br /><br />One of the primary organising themes in media coverage of PSE is that of the <span style="font-style: italic;">value</span> of education, usually its economic value (as measured by the additional income generated for individuals from a PSE credential). The question of value is usually posed as one of whether a degree is “worth it”—“it” being the cost of tuition and living expenses, or in some cases the debt that a student may incur if s/he cannot pay up-front. I've even addressed this theme a number of times <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/search/label/economics">here in my blog</a>.<br /><br />Advocates of the <a href="http://www.changinghighereducation.com/2010/10/the-college-board-has-recently-published-an-interesting-report-entitled-education-pays-2010-the-benefits-of-higher-education.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+changinghighereduca">continuing value of PSE</a> tend to argue that average post-graduation lifetime earnings justify the rising short-term cost of a university education, and/or that the <a href="http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/making-sense-of-news/136205/media-coverage-misunderstands-the-value-of-a-college-education/">non-monetary benefits of PSE</a> should be recognised. But the <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-great-college-degree-scam/28067">chorus of critics</a> has begun to drown out these optimistic (and often over-simplistic) arguments. Now that so many people are receiving university degrees, in an increasingly unstable global economy, there's no "guarantee" that <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/when-a-university-degree-just-isnt-enough/article2014732/">going to university</a> will <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/news/todays-paper/devaluation+higher+learning/4931270/story.html">land you a job</a>, let alone help you become "<a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Degrees+longer+golden+ticket+middle+class/4931269/story.html#ixzz1PpfFjj1H">upwardly-mobile</a>". Since living costs and tuition are increasing rapidly, the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/mortarboard/2011/apr/13/tuition-fees-higher-education">calculation of "risk" and "reward"</a> in higher education becomes more of a focus. More students are taking on loans, which increase the risk involved (one needs to be able to repay one's debts from the additional income generated later).<br /><br />Some coverage also focusses on how undergraduate students are "cheated" by a university system brimful of <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/06/08/new_book_takes_aim_at_tenure_and_its_impact_on_higher_education">over-privileged professors who do very little work for high pay</a>, and who would prefer not to have to deal with students at all. The university is already perceived as an arena for the elite, always somehow disconnected from "real" life and work, and such myths are reinforced by articles like <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/fat-city_567621.html?page=1">this one from The Weekly Standard</a>.<br /><br />The assessment of value has also been applied to <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Is-Graduate-School-a-Cult-/44676">graduate education</a>, and there's a <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110420/full/472261a.html">raft of commentary</a> on the <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/17723223">futility</a> of the PhD, particularly in <a href="http://youtu.be/obTNwPJvOI8">the Humanities</a>. The “<a href="http://www.pri.org/business/higher-education-is-like-a-ponzi-scheme2128.html">ponzi scheme</a>” image is invoked as a means of highlighting the relationship between the "production" of new PhDs and the (proportionally) shrinking number of tenure track academic positions available.<br /><br />The latest critiques link higher education directly to economic tropes, invoking concepts such as "<a href="http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2010/10/18/the-sub-prime-education-crisis/">sub-prime education</a>" (a comparison between sub-prime mortgages in the United States, and student loans) and the idea of higher education as an economic "bubble", popularised by <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/peter-thiel-were-in-a-bubble-and-its-not-the-internet-its-higher-education/">PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel</a>.<br /><br />News media articles, blog posts and think-tank reports are joined by books that represent not merely criticism but a "crisis literature," like the infamous <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_large_numbers_of_college_students_don_t_learn_much"><span style="font-style: italic;">Academically Adrift</span></a> in which the authors claim that universities are not performing well enough in their educative role (i.e. students are not "learning" anything), and even the more recent <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/02/23/interview_with_authors_of_new_book_on_lowering_higher_education"><span style="font-style: italic;">Lowering Higher Education: The Rise of Corporate Universities and the Fall of Liberal Education</span></a> from James Côté and Anton Allahar in Canada (both of whom also co-authored <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Ivory-Tower-Blues-University-System/dp/0802091822/ref=pd_sxp_f_pt/180-7691109-0318148"><span style="font-style: italic;">Ivory Tower Blues</span></a>). While these books contain many valid critiques, and they do "stimulate [public] debate" as their authors usually intend (Côté & Allahar, 2011, p.3), the critiques are often presented in a sensationalistic or reductionist way.<br /><br />Along with the many public arguments made about the failings of universities to educate students, there is a parallel if more specialised thread of critique. Often found in the business section of newspapers, this argument invokes "innovation" and commercialisation as <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/growth/canadas-sorry-state-of-innovation/article1750621/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+UniversityAffairsMediaScan+%28Media+Scan+%7C+University+Affairs%29&utm_content=Go">under-developed in Canada</a>--that universities should play a more effective (economic) role in their research and development capacity, too. It's worth noting that this criticism has been levelled at universities, and at Canadian industry and funding councils, for decades (Dufour & de la Mothe, 1993, p.12).<br /><br /><a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/06/universities-media-part-2-why-media.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">In a second post tomorrow</span></a>, I'll take a look at the implications of some of these criticisms and the assumptions underlying them, as well as some of the reasons why media coverage of universities is important for students, faculty, and parents, and for politicians and policy makers.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Reference:</span> Dufour, P. & de la Mothe, J. (1993). The historical conditioning of S&T. In De la Mothe, J. & Dufour, P. (Eds.), <span style="font-style: italic;">Science and technology in Canada </span>(pp. 6--22). Harlow, UK: Longman.aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-65937633259722564132011-06-18T09:05:00.021-04:002011-06-22T16:08:06.316-04:00"Live" Blog from Worldviews Conference 2011: Day 3<span style="font-weight: bold;">0924: </span>First panel of the day: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Do rankings in the media drive university priorities</span>? Moderator: Scott Jaschik; Bob Morse, US News; John O'Leary, Times Good University Guide; Simon Beck, Globe & Mail; Mary Dwyer, Macleans; Indira Samarasekera, University of Alberta; David Naylor, University of Toronto.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Bob Morse</span>: Citation analysis; are we creating bad behaviour? There's a large impact on academia from our best college rankings, no doubt. Many academic studies showing that the US News Best College Rankings influenced decision within the university, influenced priorities and strategies. These actions the schools take could be argued as both positive and negative. An example from a recent study (May 2010), NACA (admissions counsellors in high school, Canada & US); study on US News rankings on admissions counsellors perspectives. Rankings have grown in influence over the past 5 years. The majority hold a negative opinion of the rankings. 90% believed the rankings put pressure on the schools to maintain ranking; 46% believed that their schools make programmatic changes (other schools do it; we don't).<br /><br />From a ranker's perspective, the academic reality is that you can be heavily criticised by Provost, President, but the campus can still be using the rankings for marketing and alumni. Is this hypocrisy?<br />Should be viewed as part of US higher ed accountability movement. Education policies and fund expended, how much they learn, whether the students earn enough to pay off their loans.<br /><br />Rankings created a competitive environment in higher ed that didn't happen before; some see this as an improvement. Rankings are no an annual public benchmark against which academics measure themselves. Moving up in the rankings has become often a very public goal for universities.<br /><br />College presidents are able to say that rankings have become a management tool. They're able to say if they move up in rankings, that means that our educational policies have worked; they've made "progress". Make administrators do the wrong thing? Is the sole purpose to improve in the rankings? Are the decisions good for students, do they foster learning? Are those policy choices good or not? When a school makes an effort to improve graduation rates... [he assumes this means that schools fund more classes; but I would disagree.] Students "benefit" from the rankings. They can attract better faculty and students.<br /><br />Some call ranking a case of extreme unintended consequences; there have been a lot of these consequences. But rankings have become a reality and they've become the forefront of higher ed. I think the rankings are here to stay.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">09:32: John O'Leary</span>: It would be naive to believe that there's been no effect. Very different effect in the UK but still a major influence. Started in 1993. Influence that "no ranker wants": most don't want any influence because this distorts the ranking process as well as distorting education, But they do have an effect. What isn't affected are the universities in a position of strength at the top. Oxford and Cambridge have been first and second every year.<br /><br />Southampton university was deciding whether to take in a college of education and were concerned about the effect of this on their ranking. They realised and still took in the college. Ranking dropped but then rose again after a few years.<br />Main drivers are the governors of universities and to some extent the alumni.<br /><br />Effect on applications; but not for all universities. But the rankings do effect prestige and the international market. Concern that it'll distort the mission of universities further down the tables, particularly those that want to open access (this would lower the average entry grade of students coming in). Research is only one measure of 8, in the domestic case (UK).<br /><br />Some beneficial effects; the UK rankings most ehavily weighting factor was teahcing quality, which made universities pay a lot more attention than they had before the rankings existed. Eventually the universities had the system abolished; there are now student satisfaction measures, having the effect also of paying more attention to students. Happy to admit that there is an effect on behaviour but not all negative.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Simon Beck:</span> Canadian University Report Globe & Mail for past 10 years; not a ranking, student satisfaction survey. Annual survey of students is based on grades, we do compare and contrast universities but it's based purely on a survey of undergraduates.<br />Larger schools tend not to do as well on the survey.<br /><br />One past UT President's reaction to not getting a good result on the survey: "Why the hell should we care what students think about the burgers in our cafeteria?"<br /><br />An increase in response to the student survey from Canadian universities. Student satisfaction has gone to the top of universities' agendas. "You're providing a service to a consumer, students are paying customers and their quality of life is important. [Note: annoying when things like class size are linked to consumerist attitudes. Class size is important but why should this be something driven by a consumerist perspective?]<br /><br />Universities have been influenced by rankings but this is not always a positive thing [all panelists seem to agree on this so far. Ironic?]<br /><br />Focusing attention on the quality of life of undergraduate students. Criticism of international rankings is that there's too much emphasis on research. As long as universities are paying attention to rankings for the right reasons this is a positive thing [what exactly are the right reasons?]<br /><br />[Note: it's very evident from what these panelists are saying that rankings contribute significantly to marketisation of university education, including the references to students as consumers.]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">09:45: Mary Dwyer, Macleans</span>: 2 decades of ranking. I gather that the rankings DO have an influence on university priorities, to what extent and effect, it's harder to say. I've heard of both positive and negative effects.<br />No perfect mechanism for comparing universities across the country; the universities vary quite a bit. When we set up the rankings we had many consultations with universities and education experts to decide what should be included.<br /><br />Is there too much focus on research? In Macleans, 5 years ago we changed how we did the ranking; switched to collecting third-party data from sending a long survey to universities. Having to work now with available data.<br />Macleans, there IS more of a focus on research funding.<br /><br />What would be some of our "dream" indicators? What about quality of teaching? We can look at faculty teaching awards; but this is a very difficult thing to measure, there's no data there that just show what this quality level is. Same with student outcomes; and student satisfaction; interested in results of the NSSE survey [too bad there have been many methodological flaws in that one as well].<br /><br />Rankings are just one tool that can get the ball rolling for students. The rankings issue still sells very well after 20 years; there's a strong interest in this information. Students can look at data for every indicator and see the numbers. They can compare the schools [again: this is a marketisation tactic--comparing schools means "consumer choice" is invoked.]<br /><br />09:56: Common university data for Ontario. One of the organisers behind CUDO saying "we don't really expect students and their parents to be looking up this data." A lot of this kind of information does get presented in the media but interested readers can dig deeper.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Indira Samarasekera</span>, President, University of Alberta: Speak to the Canadian context; students tend to stay close to home, to go to school in their home market. Because of this the comparison of universities across Canada has little effect on the majority of students.<br />University priorities: David Naylor and I decided that we didn't want to use public money to support rankings that we at the time didn't believe were serving the university mission of teaching and research. We boycotted the rankings; the data avilable publicly was used. I think we stood for a principle that rankings shouldn't consume university resources.<br /><br />Second difficulty; individual indicators are potentially useful b/c they show what colleagues and peers are doing; but put "in a blender" they become a meaningless number. Our students never pay attention to this; we pay no attention either. No-one noticed this on campus when we went up in the rankings. It depends on how institutions have viewed the rankings.<br />Drive uni priorities to the extent we value the data Macleans outs out because it provides comparison to peers, not because we want to change our position. Our priorities are reall driven by our teaching and research mission; most concerned about undergrad student experience. Funding in Canadian universities has been on the decline.<br /><br />If they did use measures that were meaningful, maybe we would use them to make changes.<br /><br />People use proxies for education quality rather than actual measures of educational quality. You can't measure educational quality directly. Student-faculty ratio? One metric for a whole university? Same with class sizes. An outstanding professor with 1,000 students is better than a crap professor with a class of 2 students. Students have no way of comparing their experiences to those of someone in another class; they tend to respond according to their easiness of the class, whether they got a good grade, and so on.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:05: David Naylor:</span> compares university rankings to a colonoscopy ;-)<br />Aggregation of a mixed bag of measures--even if they were perfect--that causes concern. You're looking at a certain reductionism.<br />There is a certain cynicism about this.<br /><br />Issue of measurement is inevitable; part of the ethos of our time. Public accountability is inevitable and reasonable. If you don't have god measures you can end up with a quite misleading portrait of an institution. Ranking agencies that have disaggregated data: a good idea, very helpful for students and families.<br />Yes, I worry about the burgers. The reality is that food service is a part of the student experience.<br />Broad academic priorities: the rankings don't drive what we do. We also respond to labour markets, to research priorities, and so on.<br /><br />Disaggregate rankings by types of institutions. Yes the categories are arbitrary but at least we can try to avoid the comparison of highly different institutions.<br /><br />Yes, universities shamelessly flog the rankings when it's to their advantage. You want to call this hypocrisy? I call it creative adaptation.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:15: New open sourced modes of collaboration for academics online.</span> Speakers: <span style="font-weight: bold;">John Willinsky, UBC & Stanford; Mia Quint Rapaport</span>.<br /><br />Emphasis on a lot of "openness": and focussing in on specific projects.<br />Publishing as a form of scholarly communication.<br />The journal is a carry over from the 17th century; how is open source changing that? What are the instruments used in open collaboration?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Public Knowledge Project</span>: an urge to do something about sharing knowledge.<br />Faculty of education: we try to get teacher candidates interested in research before they get sent out into the classroom.<br /><br />Something wrong with this picture: we want to share knowledge, but you're not allowed to share academic knowledge because it's restricted. Contradiction in terms and in practice.<br />What would it take to make research available to the public?<br /><br />1999: How can we get our journals online? We've always been a print journal!<br />Undergrads explained: a new open source movement. This gave a focus, to build something that could be shared.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Open Journal Systems</span>: as a platform for people to publish. A way to do a traditional practice. You pretend to change only one thing. Say to journal editors: there's only one thing that'll be different. You can still do all your traditional practices; but you'll have a copy online. The platform was free and distributed for free; shared software.<br /><br />Scholarly communication needs a series of platforms, places where we can come together and work, to reduce costs.<br /><br />What's your excuse for not sharing your knowledge? What are the technical barriers?<br />Everyone will download and no-one will buy journal anymore. But this isn't what happened. There's been a continued subscription in print.<br /><br />9,300 journals have used the software. What are the implications for this? Starting figure in journal publishing was... we don't know how many journals there are. About 25,000; some say 50,000.<br /><br />New kinds of platforms create new communities, more forms of communication and collaboration. We couldn't even send people an email unless they asked for it. They could download the software without us knowing. It could be modified; it was theirs to develop and build upon. Open source economy is very different.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:45:</span> Scholar-publishers: an ancient phenomenon that virtually disappeared in the face of commercialisation of journals. Losing access because of the high price of journals; corporate consolidation. Increasingly buying up smaller publishers. Creating an alternative channel; a non-proprietary, non-market economy. 9,000 journals that aren't part of the 25,00 journals; a good proportion were new but a good amount were also already "alternative", outside the notion of commercialism.<br /><br />Scholars come together--low barrier to publishing; ability to circumvent both commercial publishers and societies. Built in all the processes used in journal publishing; emulated this in a workflow. Including double blind peer review and so on.<br /><br />Half of the journals that are using OJS are in developing countries. 4,500 visible journals, visible and searchable on Google Scholar (for example). Biggest continental "user" is Latin America. 30% have more than five editors; collaborative basis; once it's on the web, people can edit from anywhere. Rejection rate: distribution among the journals. 70% to 30%; it's a range. A profile that matches traditional journals.<br /><br />In the "old days" you'd find scholars in the print shops [note: this is a great point; printers, writers, and others would all mingle in the print shop as a space of meeting and collaboration, discussion, debate.]<br /><br />How do people contribute in terms of the software? Now: OJS, editors taking things back into their own hands. Core team of developers run through SFU library. 3,500 people participate on online forum, providing code and plug-ins and constructive criticism.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">11:02:</span> No official university policy around developing open source software. This is very important for biological and scientific research. Online global communities of academics have been developing.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Google Scholar </span>approached us: they wanted to improve the indexing of the OJS journals. Open source projects are often under the radar. Google worked closely with us.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">11:11: </span>Emphasis on non-commercial vs. anti-commercial. Most important issue of academic freedom; open source software is at least one part of the future of academic freedom. To have your work reviewed and respected for what it's worth.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">11:20: New panel: What are the emerging issues in higher education that the media could cover?</span> Moderator: Stella Hughes, UNESCO. Panelists: Jane Knight, OISE; Vanessa Bridge, U of Leeds; Paul Fain, Widmeyer Communications; Philip Fine, University World News; Glen Jones, OISE; Mike Schoenfeld, Duke University.<br /><br />Biggest story that I see right now is the lack of trust in higher ed. There are a ton of stories about the higher ed bubble. [Disruptive innovation!]<br /><br />Major topics and themes in higher education right now: sports, salacious behaviour, salaries, tuition and cost, and for elite national media, the constant competition for admission to most selective universities in U.S. Policy environment, also media coverage, shows a huge amount of skepticism, but there's still a very high degree of trust in higher education institutions.<br /><br />Economic impact of higher education: institutions of higher ed especially with medical centres have become some of the largest employers in the US. But you wouldn't know that from the higher education news coverage. Linkage between K-12 and higher education; they tend to look at the two as discreet, different entities. No connection between them.<br /><br />Changes in the nature of teaching and learning. Media coverage tends to be focused on what are they not learning; or how is technology going to change the way we teach and learn. There's a lot of interesting things happening out there, that are NOT part of the media lexicon. [Very, very good points here!]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Stella Hughes: </span>What do you think is one of the most significant issues that could suddenly come into the spotlight in the media? "Stir of interest".<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Glen Jones:</span> Quality of national data about higher education. The state of national data infrastructure has been in severe decline. E.g. Statistics Canada long form; [also YITS and others have lost funding; Canada Council for Learning]. The way we make policy decisions is based on data, but we know almost nothing about students and faculty and this is a huge detriment. There are some provincial data systems but most provinces are reliant on national data. Government is increasing release times on data as well; this is a very important story about how we make policy decisions; but it's a "dull" story, so it doesn't tend to make the media.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">11:45:</span> Higher ed should be more aggressive in trying to tell the stories about what it actually does.<br /><br />Media are "transfixed by a very traditional notion of higher education". It's a romantic, quaint notion, describing a rapidly shrinking minority of the students engaged in higher education. No story arc for the less traditional forms of higher education. Students are going to come back to college/university multiple times; so the 4-year degree with 18-year-olds is becoming a very outdated notion.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Glen Jones:</span> Internationally: the notion of increasing markets for faculty and for students is where things are going. Student recruitment student mobility; international student market. But less coverage about parallel story of faculty, "arms race" for top faculty [see yesterday's blog for more on that!]. Increasing differentiation of faculty careers in different countries and within countries. Opportunities vary a lot for different groups/people. It's not just a matter of getting more students in, we have to provide a good learning environment as well.<br /><br />"Incredible renewal" of faculty upcoming. [Prob is that we've been hearing this for years and years.] More diversity.<br /><br />Lack of understanding of who faculty members are. In the US we haven't had the conversation about this. Universities are hiring adjuncts in huge numbers without discussing whether that really makes sense.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Glen Jones:</span> Lots of focus in the media on research universities, but relatively little conversation about changes to publication, of ratings and rankings and research productivity. Most major publications are associated with only a few large international companies. Destabilisation of traditional mechanisms of higher education. What does this mean for tenure and promotion, broader hierarchies of institutions, etc.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Paul Fain:</span> "DIY U" [book that's out right now.] But a lot of free lectures are created by higher education research institutions.<br />Straighter Line; breaks courses into individual, cheap, online courses that you can buy from the company.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mike Schoenfeld:</span> Crowdsourcing, Wikipedia, etc. have already created an environment that's de-linking knowledge from credentials. Now you can get the knowledge without the credential. Where will the value end up? This is a new issue that the media will grapple with over time.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Paul Fain:</span> Send a powerful message; Peter Thiel offered the scholarships of 100K to young people if they don't go to university. One of the most public examples at the moment.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Stella Hughes:</span> What political battles are on the horizon, for faculty and students, national and international?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3:27PM</span>: Wrap up panel: <span style="font-weight: bold;">The role of media and higher education in promoting democratic culture</span>. George Fallis, York University; John Burness, Duke University; moderated by Noreen Golfman.<br /><br />George Fallis: Democratic culture: what is a democracy? How do we define it? Is Canada a democracy? The idea is rooted in political equality, an idea that all human beings are equal. (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) That's the root of a democracy. The idea is that people can govern themselves because they're free and endowed with reason [Liberal political discourse].<br /><br />3:35: Academic literature: basic intuition is fine, but the actual definition of democracy is always ongoing. Not synonymous with freedom; negative and positive liberty [freedom from; freedom to]. "Thick" and "thin" definitions of democracy. Who are the opponents of democracy? It's about people governing themselves, so one of the opponents of democracy is "experts". It's never achieved; it's an ideal, and it's always under pressure.<br /><br />There's even a ranking of democracy, and it looks somewhat like the university rankings. E.g. minority rights; peaceful transfer of power, and so on. Another category in the index: freedom of speech, thought, freedom of association, equality before the law, freedom of speech and so on. What about the political culture of a country? You can have institutions, but you might not have a vibrant democracy without characteristics of civil society.<br /><br />3:37: The press/the media are clearly "there" in a democracy; everybody understands the role of the media in a democracy [really? I'd contest that one!]. The media monitor the state of democracy in a country [again--highly contested idea]. New technologies are opening up possibilities for a more vibrant discussion. The notions of author and distributor are being broadened.<br /><br />Universities are virtually never mentioned in the literature about democracy. And in the definitions and index of democracy they say very little about education. What's the role that professors can play in democratic life? They contribute in ways that can be very like what the media do.<br /><br />A government FOR the people? Basic characteristics of democracy--provide the positive liberty so that people can flourish to their full potential. The university has a significant role in this. But we haven't begin to reflect much about how good citizens are "created". The historic literature on education has much to contribute. The Greek notion of education was rooted in the idea of how good citizens are created.<br /><br />3:41: Liberal education; the most important role that universities can play in a democracy is how they educate their students; we're now doing a poor job b/c we've pushed this away, we focus on employability, on research culture, and so on. While universities must conceive and evaluate themselves as institutions of democracy, we must be honest that our record on supporting democracy is not that great--universities weren't places where transformation to democratic life took place; and tough education breaks down some inequality, it also creates another level of inequality around "merit". So while we have equality of opportunity we're creating inequalities through a meritocratic system.<br /><br />We have to acknowledge that much of what we do creates an inequality that's problematic in a democracy. We also create experts who try to shape/frame the public debate, which democracy is about the wisdom of citizens to govern themselves.<br /><br />Academic freedom: in a democratic society, when that government provides the money to allow us to do what we do, there's a deep tension between parliament's responsibility to be accountable, and our desire for academic freedom. Some of the tensions we're facing are laudable in the sense that it's a democratic society asking to understand what we do and whether we do it well and whether the outcomes we claim are following from our work are what people want, and are being achieved. Tension between government support and academic freedom.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">John Burness</span>: Importance of linguistics. What do the terms mean that we're using? E.g. very different ideas of who the media are and what they do.<br /><br />In the U.S. higher education is such a diverse enterprise that the label "higher education" is seen as an aggregated enterprise, when it's anything but. It's not a monolith, but it tends to be seen that way in a lot of the reporting that happens.<br /><br />University mission statements: is the promotion of democracy part of the mission statements of universities? Academic freedom: encourages academics and others within the university to have the kinds of debates that are supposed to happen in the broader societies. Universities are places where people are encouraged to disagree. Younger people should be able to take these viewpoints and come to their own conclusions [critical thinking].aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-40529386173521023712011-06-17T09:07:00.023-04:002011-06-22T16:08:06.318-04:00"Live" Blog from Worldviews Conference 2011: Day 2<span style="font-weight: bold;">09:12: </span>Panel now beginning: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Science research, science journalism, and science policy</span>. Hosted by Bob MacDonald of CBC's Quirks & Quarks. Participants: Penny Park, Science Media Centre; Pallava Bagia, Science; Valera Roman, Clarin.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">09:19: Bob MacDonald</span>: I know how hard it is to get journalists out of bed in the morning!<br />We don't ask for opinions, only for the basic stuff. Sometimes this gets frustrating because I'll have a scientist who's an expert raise a "red flag" about something; then I see how the politicians do not act. Or people who aren't scientists have an agenda and put out info to mislead the public. This is what science journalism is for--to set the record straight. Sometimes we're up against some powerful forces that don't want those messages to get out there.<br />Movies and sciences--scientists are always "mad", even if they start out good they turn into the bad guys or women; I love how science is misrepresented. Superman--defying the laws of physics, and not just in the superhero way. Lois Lane shouldn't have survived even being caught by Superman; he couldn't have caught her with "arms of steel" without her getting pulped. Nice!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Pallava Bagla</span>, chief correspondent for Science for South Asia; New Delhi TV; author of multiple books.<br />India has a large population that is illiterate; the way to get the message of science out was through TV and I opted for that.<br />Report came out--glaciers of Himalayas would melt by 2035. These are 3rd largest accumulation of water in the world. Over 1.5 billion people depend on this water. I realised there was a problem with the reports. A lone journalists against a couple of thousand scientists, not an easy task. Glaciers don't behave the same way in the Himalayas as they do in other parts of the world. Just before the Copenhagen conference we put out a story on TV. I was attacked by several members of the IPCC. How can you take a pot shot at such a learned party.<br /><br />I didn't attack--I just out a fact out that highlighted your error. Finally they offered their regrets.<br />A case where the best and the worst of science came together in the space of a few weeks.<br /><br />Several other stories that went against the tide.<br />1998 India exploded a nuclear bomb, for the second time. I questioned the size of the bombs, whether they were large or small.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">09:30: </span>Times of India: largest English-language paper in the world.<br />Policy: 80% of research, funding comes from the government. Increased public funding, India has decided that it wants to increase private sector funding for research.<br />India sent its first probe to the moon. International partners on Indian mission. I broke this story in 1999, for the next 6-8 years I reported on this extensively. In 2009, when the probe dies prematurely, having reported on this some people felt I was as much a part of the space association as any of the scientists. Space and nuclear are two very secretive areas of work and I reported on both of them.<br />Same moon probe came up with first evidence of water on the moon.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">09:36: Valera Roman</span>, Clarin; Vice President of the World Federation of Science Journalism.<br />Reveals barriers to teaching evolution in Argentina.<br /><br />Science journalism is a way to learn new things every day; I live in Argentina which is a developing country so we need to improve the situation there. It's a difference with journalists in developing countries because we feel the journalism is a way to change the environment.<br />While I work for a national paper, after MIT I thought I should work as an activist for science journalism. I started to organise some workshops and meetings to bring together science journalists. We had a big problems because science journalists work for multiple institutions at once (conflict of interest). But this is a norm, we have these "two hats". it's a problem to face.<br />In Argentina we have a lot of stories to tell about science because the situation has been brewing, so we have more scientists in the country a lot of people who were overseas came back, so we have a new science initiative.<br /><br />Last week Argentina launched a satellite. We work to reach the general public with scientific evidence. In developing countries most political decisions are taken without considering science. So we're trying to fill this gap. A good example is the tobacco control issue in Argentina, for 30 years the tobacco industry has been lobbying against any regulation.<br /><br />The industry paid doctors to say that second-hand smoke is not harmful. They paid off journalists and politicians, it was a big problem. But the past 5 years, the media have paid more attention to the scientific evidence for controlling tobacco. This past year--2 weeks ago--there is a new law and the country has become a smoke-free country. So we have to face a lot of problems, but I think science journalists can make a big difference.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">09:44: Penny Park</span>, Science Media Centre executive director.<br />Science Media Centre is a new organisation that's been set up to help journalists cover science.<br />Our goal is to raise the level of discourse in this country. There are few specialists in reporting science in Canada, but science issues are part of the stories we need to discuss in a democracy. The idea is based on one that started in the UK about 10 years ago, partly in response to the terrible tabloid journalism that had been going on relating to GMOs, for example. An organization that would help journalists get access in a timely way to good, evidence-based, accurate information. That's the sort of thing we do.<br /><br />Who reads the media? We all use it; policy-makers, legislators, entrepreneurs, scientists, are the audience. Making sure the info they have access to is accurate. We're trying to improve the discussion rather than presenting any one particular point of view. Science needs to be part of the discussion at the table. Policy: science should be "sitting there". Other aspects of policy--economics, values--should be part of the discussion. We need evidence-based research. In Canada we've has some interesting discussions.<br /><br />E.g. safe injection site in Vancouver; should money be going to this? The science says "yes".<br />yesterday we had a discussion with a Canadian Stem Cell researcher who was running a clinic at U Michigan, and the state had legislation that didn't allow for that kind of research; so he was part of the move to change the legislation in the state (Proposition 2) and was up against a lobby group that spent 10 million to try to shut down stem cell research in the state.<br />Climate change, nuclear energy..all these issues we need to be discussing as a society; ensuring that science is part of the discourse; that's what we're trying to do.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">09:57</span>: [Great discussion with questions on this panel; science journalism has a special role as science has such an influential role in our society, and many issues are fraught with tension because lobbyists, corporate sectors, scientists and so on, all have an interest in these outcomes, and the outcomes (especially policy on major science-related issues) have an effect on the general public.]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:22: Keynote: Are you listening? Has the "cross-dressing" of media and academia created better understanding between these worlds, or do they remain two solitudes?</span> by Michelle Stack. Moderated by John Fraser, Massey College. Includes Adam Habib; Cat Warren; Nicole Blanchett; Ann Rauhala; Jerrfrey Dvorkin; Sandy McKean.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:40:</span> Our understanding of education in contemporary society; universities under pressure to brand themselves in current context. Issues around branding and neoliberalism are important. But we have needed a conference/discussion that goes beyond critique; need to dialogue and work better together (journalists and academics). Public policy debate and policy about what is a good and worthwhile education in a democracy society. Who gets invoked as an expert?<br /><br />The media has a direct effect on policy making. Of course! Policy making is mediated. The public come to know about policies through media. So how do journalists decide what is a good education story?<br /><br />Are academics and journalists two solitudes? There are impediments to this relationship, they are central to which voices policy makers hear and listen to.<br />The door's left wide open for policy makers to provide "false choices".<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:45: </span>Issue of impediments to engaging the public: decline in newspaper audiences and large cuts to budgets; journalists have less time for fact checking and investigative reporting. Journalists experience the pressures of intensification of work conditions just as academics do.<br /><br />Journalists and academics often reinforce each other in circulating discourses about education. E.g. rankings: circle of mutually-reinforcing reiteration? Journalists use rankings to talk about the "best universities".<br /><br />Journalists as watchdogs? What about the lapdog? Friendly, small, obedient to government and business, who provide regular "meals" (information, issues to write about). Academics--the ivory tower--a symbol of virginal purity. This metaphor is used to show the academy's "distance and disdain from "reality". But these metaphors don't reflect the complexity of academics and journalists.<br /><br />Sometimes journalism can be stronger than academic research. E.g. immunisation debate over vaccines and autism: the Lancet published this piece, which gave the author/researcher a "launching pad of credibility". A reported did journalistic research to uncover shabby academic research.<br /><br />Cross dressers? Noam Chomsky: got involved in politics in the 1960s; he wanted to critique the academy and had to engages with the public in order to get this message across. He used his research to create opportunities for understanding. Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Dimed. Did investigative research on low-income workers in the U.S. She realised that PhDs were not immune from sexism; she quit her job and became a full-time journalist. Both these people are public intellectuals. Ehrenreich became a journalist, Chomsky because a media figure. They both found ways to transcend the definition of their fields.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:58</span>: Perhaps we're asking the wrong question when we ask "is this work academic or journalism?" What are the methods, the beliefs about responsibility and the public that underpin this work?<br /><br />Solitudes and configurations of power: Is that person a "real" researcher or a "real" journalist? E.g. the Daily Show--provides more news than anything on FOX or CNN.<br />Debates/relationships are different in different places (e.g. different countries).<br />Different models of academic public engagement. But a new model means nothing if issues of inequity are not highlighted and challenged.<br /><br />Structural biases in both professions: most had not considered why most experts are white and male. Academics in the Global North: making careers talking about their research on globalisation, whilst excluding those most affected by globalisation.<br /><br />Knowledge dissemination: WHO is invoked as an expert, who is the beneficiary of expertise? Certain groups are more quoted in mainstream media than others. I.e. white men. In media women's foundation: women 1/3 of full-time journalism workforce in one survey of 500+ companies. Studies point to power configurations that invoke some as experts, others as beneficiaries.<br /><br />Internal power configurations of respective fields (e.g. political economic issues). Journalists and academics: what are the implications of these systemic issues for the quality of public debates? We need to have serious conversations about who has access to the mechanics of power within and across these two fields.<br /><br />Disciplinary/professional "solitudes": re-frame the question in terms of what are the ethos that frame journalistic and academic knowledge about education? To expand conversations about public education, we need more comparative research, and more conversations like the ones facilitated by this conference.<br /><br />Graham Hingangaroa Smith: Encouraging public rather than privatised academics.<br />Work going on in New Zealand :-) More examples: University of Venus; Informed Opinions (works with female academics to get them to engage with media).<br /><br />Educational activism is important: but activism without attention to media is not sufficient. Academics must become media literate. Solitude can be a lonely place though it can also be an important space. But eventually we have to come out of these "solitudes" and engage in new ways, especially as a means of informing a democratic/pluralistic society. It's imperative that we consider the engagement of media & academia as vital networks for invigoration of public spaces, and development of research/information literacy of the public.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3:12PM</span>: Panel on "The research arms war and the battle for researchers". Includes Wisdom Tettey, Noreen Golfman, and Philip Altbach. Moderated by Glen Jones of OISE.<br /><br />Wisdom Tettey: the African context and African researchers in the global research architecture.<br />Significant competition globally for research and researchers; reputation, researcher support; excellence begets further research and support. Situation yourself as attractive partner for research collaborations; ranking (implications).<br /><br />Global architecture: everyone wants the "best minds" no matter where they're located. Implications for academics around the world who want to be part of this network but aren't being provided the resources for this.<br />Institutions in the North are trying to attract academics from around the world.<br />How that struggle to attract people will affect research relevance.<br />EU has a "blue card" system to attract researchers, for example.<br /><br />GDP in African countries lags behind the rest of the world [so there are fewer resources for research]. No granting councils in many of these African countries.<br />Implications for publishing capacity of the institutions. How do they find the resources and the outlet.<br />Reality of "knowledge architecture". Recognition that's given to knowledge networks around the world tends to marginalise certain kinds of researchers.<br />Implication beyond individuals is that institutions are mimicking what the "leading" institutions are doing; implications for diversity of research.<br />Who defines the research agenda and how that shapes the location of African research.<br /><br />How uncritical institutions are when engaging in these partnerships-?<br />Will engagement open up doors to the global stage?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3:20PM: </span>Recruitment drives going on as institutions engage in what's euphemistically called "internationalisation"--commodification of knowledge.<br />Media; tendency to focus on African primary and secondary education.<br />Universities, what goes on it often disconnected from the public in general.<br />Institutional support for engagement? Many universities have public engagement but they haven't made significant efforts to open up spaces for engagement.<br /><br />Philip Altbach: Global knowledge economy does affect the way knowledge moves around. "true academic revolution" propelled by two main things.<br /><br />Massification: dramatic increase in enrolments. Move to "universal access".<br />In many countries, this has led to a differentiated and increasingly segmented system of HE. What that means for this topic is that we're talking about a tiny top of this huge massified system. No global arms race for community college teachers. Only for the people at the topic of the system. Active researchers.<br />[Note: this is the interesting conflict between "meritocracy" and "democracy".]<br />Decline in the quality of the higher education systems around the world; though in Canada it seems that the overall quality has been "protected".<br />Top universities may be less great than systems where there is a more formal tiered system (like in California). [Note: not sure if California is really the best example for us to look at right now...the whole system is practically falling apart right now.]<br /><br />Beginnings of global language and scholarship, i.e. English; it's the Latin of the 21st Century. English isn't the medium of instruction globally.<br /><br />The peripheries are "bleeding" to the centres that's a characteristic of the academic "arms races". The academic world is also becoming more "multi-polar"; different parts of the world are now building research centres and infrastructure (e.g. China).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3:38: </span>South Africa is "bleeding" to the US and Canada, but it's stealing from its neighbours; South African scholars, mainly (but not all) white, are going to the U.S.; Saudi Arabia is hiring from other Arab countries, e.g. Egypt and Syria. And the Americans steal from everybody. The U.S. pays the best salaries still [question: is that overall, or just for tenure-track faculty?].<br />Unequal, centre-periphery, but highly mobile work context/dynamic.<br /><br />[<span style="font-weight: bold;">3:42:</span> Canada Excellence Research Chairs issue comes up in a question. No, there were no women candidates; and all CERC hires were international. This is a program that highlights the equity issues involved in these high-stakes competitions.]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4:30PM</span>: I'm late for this panel after walking back down from the Munk Centre, but happy I didn't miss all of it. Panel: <span style="font-weight: bold;">"Muted Voices and Higher Education Media Coverage"</span>. Shari Graydon, John Miller and Vinita Srivastava, moderated by Minelle Mahtani.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4:48PM: Globe & Mail</span> [I don't have this speaker's name--she wasn't on the program]: Huge role for communications departments at universities. [Note: I take it this means public relations comms rather than Communication Studies ;-)]<br /><br />The media tend to pick the same person again and again due to time constraints and so on. But there are ways of building up these relationships without being "sought out". Academic blogs can be one way of doing this; creating contacts with trusted individual reporters/journalists. Men may be more comfortable being self-promotional. Downside: time consuming and journalists may want a reductionist or simplistic version of research points. Even emailing the paper to find out what happened to your op ed can be a good idea.<br /><br />Leaders impact who gets air time, who has access to influencers. Not caught up with demographic shift; nonwhites are completely under-represented in the media AND in universities and colleges. 70% of leaders in GTA in business, nonprofits, media, education, and so on, are non-white. Companies that track and count diversity actually get better results; a lot of subconscious bias can be overcome in this way; diversity doesn't "just happen" on its own. The media, something like 4% of leaders are from diverse backgrounds; and these are the people shaping public attitudes, no surprise that there's not very good representation in the op-ed section.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4:50PM: Vinita Srivastava</span> on using social media.<br />Importance of media representation: mainstream media has historically marginalised racialised groups. Media sparks public dialogue.<br /><br />How social media might make space and influence the dialogue: The public prefer the "authentic voice" over expert opinion/coverage (?).<br /><br />Is bypassing the media a good thing? You need to get your voice into mainstream media, but this relates to building social capital (first).<br /><br />One in ten African Americans using Twitter every day, far higher than whites and Latino/a users. [How do we interpret that data? What does it "mean"?]<br />Many people/groups have been "left out", are social media helping people to feel "empowered"?<br /><br />Benefits of using social media: access to a community of scholars who aren't necessarily around you (geographically/physically). Less isolation; direct communication with students; changes to self-perception/ego.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">5:27PM:</span> Last panel for me today: Should universities and colleges, drawing on the experience of academia in science, politics, economic development, arts and culture, and community affairs, bypass the mainstream media?<br />Includes: Moderater Paul Fain, plus Wilf Dinnick of Open File, Jenny Leonard of Futurity, Andrew Jaspin of The Conversation, Hanson Hosein of University of Washington.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Jenny Leonard</span>, Futurity publication--launched in 2009. Promotes research.<br />The kind of stories that can engage the imagination.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Andrew Jaspin</span>: We're just 10 weeks old. Similar to Futurity except that we focus on analysis, commentary and news, and issues such as academic freedom. E.g. death threats to climate scientists in Australia (recent issue covered). Major series on debunking the climat change denials, actually using peer review on the climate denials.<br />We also engage in real time; a team of 14 editors engaging with the news cycle; all writers are academics, and there are 1,000 of them; a larger virtual newsroom than any mainstream media in Australia.<br />Mainstream media are bypassing themselves; they've had "bypass operations", they are their own worst enemies. E.g. the Globe and Mail five years ago was a much larger and very different paper.<br />Offer an alternative service that is based on reliable and trustworthy content.<br />We were able to produce much more quickly a very deep analysis of Osama Bin Laden's death/assassination.aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-41794279718369002822011-06-16T08:56:00.033-04:002011-06-22T16:08:06.320-04:00"Live" Blog from Worldviews Conference 2011: Day 1<span style="font-weight: bold;">9:02</span>: After some struggles with wireless issues, we're finally online and I can start making comments about the talks :-) We've seen an introduction to the conference, and another welcome from the editor of Inside Higher Ed.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:05:</span> Dr. Glen Jones from OISE: We're trying to understand "truth", that's a commonality between higher education and media. But there are differences of scope and scale, academic focus is usually much more narrow than what journalists can report. The timelines are very different as well; in the academic world, time moves much more slowly than in journalism.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">09:08:</span> Dr. Glen Jones: Two communities (universities/academic and media/journalists) don't necessarily interact; they have a lot to learn from each other. Faculty need to learn more about how the media works. Media may need to understand more about the complexities of the academic world. Through critical analysis we need to understand more about ourselves (academics, the university). The greatest potential lies in finding new ways to build these relationships, to allow these communities to work better together. The goal is create an informed society and we all play a role in that.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">09:18:</span> UNESCO representative Stella Hughes introduces the first session. Why would anyone trust the media? :-)<br /><br />Academics can't "trust" the media to tell the "whole truth" because that isn't their job. They're not there to be exhaustive; and there could be a disconnect here in terms of understanding. So trusting the media to "do their job" doesn't necessarily mean trusting them to tell the "whole truth".<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">09:30: </span>John Burness of Duke University: Who covers university issues? Often, this coverage is in the financial section of the paper, not in a section dedicated to education. He thinks the areas where changes have occurred have been within universities & colleges as organisational structures and how they manage themselves.<br /><br />Stella Hughes: Is institutional change something that isn't yet "grasped" by the media? Is this because there's an ambiguity within higher education about its roles and responsibilities? Mass higher education--almost a contradiction in terms. Is this not seen as an issue for the media, i.e. the transformation of the whole sector?<br /><br />Tony Burman of Al Jazeera: Higher education's not a monolith, it's not one single institution. There's a "dumbing down" that happens in the coverage.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">09:35: </span>Stella Hughes: Media seem to engage in cherry picking of the better stories or the "hottest" stories. They tend to home in on anxieties. Will I get a job? Is it worth doing a degree? And so on. Aren't we losing something by always homing in on those issues and failing to look at what we want, as societies, from the higher education system. Discussion should be more similar to how we talk about the health system and even the school system.<br /><br />My note: as a formerly elite for of education, postsecondary ed doesn't have that long-term discussion/discourse going where there is a public debate about what would be "good for everyone".<br /><br />Tony Burman: There's a variety of coverage; it's not all the same.<br />Hughes: To what extent could the authority of universities, their expertise, be a stumbling block to actually analysing the problems with the system? Are people reluctant to look at the "fundamental challenge" of mass higher education?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">09:40: </span>John Burness: Mentions a key point, which is that the responsibility for failing public schools is also being somewhat uploaded to colleges and universities which are expected to fill a skills deficit. We can't even "fix" our own problems, how can we fix these issues as well?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">09:45:</span> Hughes: Positioning of higher education in the "knowledge revolution"--shouldn't we be in the best position in this debate? Yet some of the most vital parts of this revolution are think-tanks, silicon valley, other places "outside" universities. "Think tanks are the bridge between knowledge and power." So isn't it important for higher education to claim some ownership of that?<br /><br />Burness: Higher education needs to create knowledge and disseminate it, which is what it does best. Different issue with think tanks: they are tied to the political process. Their job is less to provide objective info, more to reinforce views from one side or another.<br /><br />Burman: In Washington [DC] the explosion of news channels shows that more academics are on TV, there's more visibility than ever before.<br /><br />My note: expertise is very regulated though (i.e. how experts from academe are "chosen"); it's also gendered (more men than women). The people chosen as "experts" even from academic professions are often the same people over and over, and not always commentating on their actual areas of expertise.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">09:56:</span> Stella Hughes to Tony Burman: Can you tell the difference when you're interviewing an academic if they've had proper media training?<br /><br />Tony Burman: Depends where you are. In Canada, the US, Europe, that would be the case. With Al Jazeera we bring in so many academics from so many different backgrounds that there isn't really a combative relationship; we're as interested as they are to make their point clearly, to get through to the audience.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:05:</span> Great question/comment session. Are universities really doing enough to "defend" themselves from attacks that come from think tanks, from critics through the media, and so on? Why do they move slowly to respond? There is a constant barrage of criticism in the media, much of it not based on any thorough understanding of how universities actually work.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:20:</span> New session beginning. Time for Keynote talk #1 with Adam Habib, University of Johannesburg, moderated by Karen MacGregor of University World News.<br /><br />Habib: Scale of meaning in important--when someone says there's a crisis in higher education in the U.S., "part of me says "you don't know what that means.""<br />When you think about "crises", they mean fundamentally different things in different parts of the world. We need to pay attention to these differences.<br />The relationship between the university and the media is one that hasn't been sufficiently explored. One reason this needs to happen is for inclusive development: that speaks to the interests of everyone in society. Not just a technocratic and policy process, but a political process about accountability.<br />For that to happen, the higher education sector and the media must play the roles they need to play; these create political conditions for a robust public discourse about these issues.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:31: </span>Summarising the role and social function of both the university and the media.<br /><br />Universities: Role is to provide high level graduates for the economy; to provide a critical citizenry for society; to provide cutting edge research; to enable and enrich the public discourse; to produce the social values of the society and its dominant values in particular; and to harbour intellectual dissidents who ask "hard questions of society".<br /><br />Role of the media is to keep people informed; to provide voice for citizen & society stakeholders; enhancing accountability of political system; to reflect the voice of corporate and other dominant elites; to expose corruption and the violation of ethics; to enrich the political and policy discourse in society.<br /><br />Suggests that they should be natural allies and partners even if this partnership will at times be strained.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:41:</span> Relationship takes between universities and media takes 4 distinct forms:<br /><br />1. Universities are the subject of reporting and investigation; sometimes this isn't understood/appreciated by those in universities; but universities in particular represent a huge investment of public resources and this is partly where that interest comes from. This is entirely legitimate considering the role of the media in ensuring accountability. The problem is how they think the question through: they approach it with the mentality of an accountant, rather than the substantive, reflective sense.<br /><br />2. The media is a service provider through which universities enhance academic teaching and research profile particularly through branding and marketing. Many people see marketing as part of corporatisation dynamic. But universities can benefit enormously from appropriate branding and marketing.<br /><br />3. Universities and media can be partners to enrich the public discourse. Partnering with sections of the media as has happened, successfully, in South Africa. Political accountability and inclusive development.<br /><br />4. The media acts as an agent of advocacy on behalf of the university. Including sources like Chronicale, Inside Higher Ed, Times Higher Ed, and so on. They report but also advocate on behalf of the sector. The choice of articles often highlights the best aspects of the sector, legitimating the sector.<br /><br />But when major, politically charged problems have arisen in the universities, both now and in the past, are the university-aligned media recognising this and bringing attention to it? For example, structural adjustment programs in African countries.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:57:</span> Habib describes transnational issues for universities and media:<br /><br />--Responsiveness of research questions in the academy to the specific concerns of the developing world. E.g. renewable energy and climate change. Much of the debate in the global academy is focussed on bio-fuels, solar panels, etc.; but how feasible are these kinds of solutions on the African continent? 80% of people there don't have access to energy at all; both cost and energy access need to be considered.<br /><br />--How legitimate are traditional indicators of university productivity, and rankings? These things must be questions; blind peer review, for example, is not easily achieved in small academic communities. Citations are often talked about, but they're largely influenced by the size of national academies. What is the impact of the spread of international university rankings? Is the media sufficiently aware of how these rankings can subvert national development goals? Rankings can force universities to behave in unhelpful ways.<br /><br />--Academic book production is declining in many parts of the developing world; this is a product of the measures of academic productivity, which favour journals. A research unit is defined as a journal article, not a monographs; they can get more "research units" credited to them in this way.<br /><br />--Nature of the global inequality of universities. Good academics in South Africa, for example, want to be published in influential places. But are their issues prioritised? Most of the time, no.<br /><br />--Annual cost of academic and research journals has been increasing rapidly, seriously compromising the academic project in less developed parts of the world. This is becoming a truly difficult burden for smaller or less well financed institutions. This is no longer just an issue for the developing world, but one that is affecting universities in Europe and the United States (for example). How legitimate is it for academic journals to be housed under and academic banner? Should these not be organised towards public service ends?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1:38PM: Back to live-blogging after a lunch break!<br /><br />Bill Ayers:</span> Responsibility of intellectuals and academics entering the public sphere.<br />"Something of a Stunt Intellectual"...the intellectual that other intellectuals call when they want to jump off a bridge"<br /><br />Pay attention, be astonished, and then say something about it. God advice for living a moral life, for being a citizen. We are not simply academics. We don't take off our citizenship when we enter the academy. We all have this responsibility, to see everything in its complexity, to be astonished; the joy of living; then to say something about it, to comment on it.<br />--What are we not seeing today? What are we not opening our eyes to today? As with slavery in the past.<br />If you take that rhythm, opening your eyes, that's not something you can do "once" a lifetime or once a week, it's an infinite dynamic ongoing world, opening your eyes is something that you must do again and again and again." We're horrified and delighted and we speak up.<br />We have to doubt that wheat we've seen is all there is to see, that what we've said is all there is to say. There's always something new, new insights, new perspectives. f we avoid the last step then we slip easily into dogma.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1:41PM:</span> Bill Ayers: Nothing precious or special about academics speaking in the public sphere; we shouldn't remove ourselves from what's happening.<br />Academic freedom is an instance of free speech; a particular place of free speech, a kind of free speech. We should defend on the basis of universality of free speech, not specialness of free speech (in the university; in society).<br />Cold wind blowing through the academy: it silences academics but it also silences everyone else. When academics are attacked publicly, what does that mean to everyday people, to teachers, when even a powerful celebrity intellectual can be brought down? We need to defend academic freedom because it's a part of general freedom of speech.<br /><br />We don't need freedom of speech to repeat established and accepted ideas. We need it to question those ideas. The ways in which common sense comes to normalise insane ideas. Academics have a special responsibility to push back against that.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1:46PM: </span>A general problem: the shrinking of the public square, something that should concern everybody. It gets shrunk because we take an anemic view of what democracy is or could be. This kills the spirit of democracy, a spirit of dialogue and mutual respect, rests on a precious and fragile ideal: the incalculable value of every human being<br /><br />We have to push the notion that democracy requires dialogue. The fullest development of all of us is the condition for the fullest development of each of us.<br />Democracy by its nature is dialogical and dialectical. Whatever new consensus we arrive at, we have to re-examine, re-look. It's never finished: it's a project always in the making. It requires an alter, attentive citizenry. It requires the arts.<br /><br />Education should be a place where we imagine the "alternatives". The arts show us world world in another way. This opens the space for real democratic thinking.<br />The way we're living is not adequate. We are more, that definition doesn't limit us, we could be more.<br />Our job as intellectuals is to always make things more complicated. Teaching the taboo: teaching what we don't know. Teaching how to ask the questions that need to be asked. it's always the next question that's interesting.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1:52PM:</span> Art is what urges voyages: if you think about education broadly, including the media and advertising and public debate/discussion, education does not require obedience and conformity; the excising of the arts from the curriculum is always a big message to everybody else. It's a public pedagogy.<br /><br />Guilt by association is the real danger. If anyone (dissident) shared a church, a neighbourhood, with Obama, he would be tainted by association: but this should be a virtue, not a sin; to leave the path and spend time around diverse groups. When strange and weird and wild winds can blow, that's when we stand the best chance of living in a real democracy that has real substance.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2:14PM</span>: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Social Media on Campus keynote talk.</span><br /><br />Alfred Hermida (moderator): Social media is an elusive term--it's hard to explain to someone who doesn't know what it is.<br />Characterised by collaboration. Can disrupt hierarchical systems. As educators we're figuring out, how do we navigate these media?<br />Social media are about networked, asynchronous, distributed dynamics. Participation, collaboration, sharing, fluidity.<br /><br />Sydneyeve Matrix (speaker): social web: commerce, culture, information...digital proclivities; web first.<br />Teaching the connected cohort: everyone has a camera, everyone has a phone...technologies that work as social cohesion.<br />Building a shared economy<br /><br />Facebook generation: parents, teachers;<br />bringing expectations that are "super-disruptive". Personalise the experience of the campus, personalise their experiences of the campus, of courses, of course content.<br />Infovores...consuming and creating digital media.<br /><br />Real time information must be "super-fresh". Sometimes instant isn't even fast enough. Students will crowdsource every single lesson. News-sharing.<br /><br />tech-forward initiatives; strongly appeal to "Generation Y". We know we can get buy in from this; students will also do better this way.<br />Plugged-in courses, plugged-in campus; these drive student engagement.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2:29PM:</span> Leading to "better outcomes" by using technology.<br /><br />Teaching in the age of Wikipedia and Google. Students push back every time they need to "memorise" something. Do we NEED multiple choice exams? When we have Wikipedia? Those are conversations we aren't really having in mainstream news.<br /><br />Personal learning environments, on campus, and reportage; we have a tech skills gap. In terms of faculty administrators, staff, C-suite, and so on; and students have expectations, and some profs are already trying to make change and having a hard time.<br /><br />Reverse techno-mentoring? A fix for these problems. Grabbing someone young and getting them to show you what they do with technology.<br />What are we doing on campus already? Social media on campus is about Q&A right now. How do I get in, where do I get my meal card, etc.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2:39PM</span>:<br />"Like a Little" --"flirting" on campus. (Example of how students adopt technology)<br />Privilege intergenerational relationships; helps us to keep up.<br /><br />Launching a web site for a class and socialising it. Page must change every hour; social recognition is the currency of the web, and they can get it when their content is being splashed across the class page/feed.<br /><br />Need to teach where the students already are; e.g. teaching on Facebook.<br />--Teaching on niche social networks like Ning. Niche sites are gated communities, so what's different about twaching on Facebook and teaching somewhere like Ning?<br />--Wordpress: open-source teaching, student blogging, and so on. You get a lot of traffic on a blog/website when you do this.<br />--Social publishing: microcontent "purpose-built for sharing".<br /><br />High proportion of students have smart phones.<br />We need to be smart phone ready. If this isn't a priority for you and your content but this is your demographic, you should be thinking about it.<br />iTunes U: do students like to listen to lectures? Definitely. Lots of demand for Podcasts and videos.<br /><br />"Comfort of ambient connectivity". "Digital pain": what happens when students don't get their WiFi, their plugs for electronic devices, and so on. How do we manage this?<br />--Get text and email (SMS) reminders before assignments are due? Only 8% of students opted into this. Students didn't want their private/personal phones; they didn't want to hear from the prof through SMS.<br />--Backchannel: Twitter is [apparently] already "old school".<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2:44PM</span>: "Just in time learning"?--"I'm not going to worry about that exam in December.<br />[My note: why on earth would we want to encourage this kind of learning habit?]<br />QR codes: students want to scan things. [What about students who don't have a Blackberry? Or who can't afford a SmartPhone?]<br />Students want to "add value" to the community, add value to the course web site. Integrate mainstream media into the classroom as well as social media.<br /><br />Losing control: what happens when students "over-share"? Example of the girl who posted a racist video. Any example of unfortunate Twitter or Facebook status updates.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4:31PM: Panel on "What do new media offer that mainstream media don't?"</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Wilf Dinnick, Open File</span>: readers have the oportunity to suggest stories which we then follow up with professional reporters; stories that readers suggest are almost always more popular in terms of readership (metrics). In academe you have a huge potential to source information that you may not have known was "out there".<br />Set out to engage the public differently than the way the mainstream media do. Huge potential to tap into an audience or group that has expertise.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Vinita Srivastava, Ryerson</span>: Level of coverage, e.g. post-9/11, is not critical or informative enough.<br />Social media and bloggers can't necessarily "lead" a news cycle; we still need resources in the mainstream media, and with media consolidation fewer and fewer investigative reporters are employed and available to provide in-depth reporting.<br />There's a "gap" in mainstream media, a "disappointment"; some of that is being filled by the way users employ social media.<br />"Going viral": otherwise obscure issues can become very, very public through dissemination, such as the student who was tasered on campus; YouTube videos circulated and made the mainstream media.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4:42PM: Daniel deVise, Washington Post:</span> Su Meck, story of the woman who re-made her life after she lost her memory; it was on the front page of the Post yet it circulated far more through "new media" channels, and many people didn't even know that it has been a Washington Post story. "Vast army" of people who are reiterating, restating all over the place; people "take the stuff that we write and replicate it", which is great because it's dissemination. The Post is just one piece of "thing huge thing", the newspaper is now like "one massive op-ed page". Many many more people are "out there" writing their opinion of things; great writers, brilliant people, wonderful content. We've tried to match new media, through blogs and Twitter. This also brings content to the paper that wouldn't ordinarily be there. Finite number of news producers, large number of circulators and commentators.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4:49PM: Mary Churchill, University of Venus:</span> New media as a game-changer for Gen-X women in higher education. Blog was started over a year ago. Started on WordPress blog with just 8 authors. Reading things online and reporting and commenting. 4 months into the project, Inside Higher Ed offered a spot on their site. 90,000 viewers from a couple of hundred (!). Twitter was one way through which this happened. Found new readers and also new writers, also international not only in the United States and Canada. Presence on Facebook, page now has 800+ "likes". Facebook gives very good demographic shots; shows the readers tend to reflect the topic of the blog. Another development: relationship with Guardian.co.uk; over 250 comments on "Women and leadership in Higher Ed". [My note: see my post called "Leading the Pack"]. This led to further blog posts by UVenus writers.<br />Shared tactics; new knowledge; community building; etc. With new readers come new writers.<br />New media provides a new playing field; subjectivity; insider knowledge; build community; solve problems.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">5:16PM: </span>Next panel time--> Alfred Hermida, JAmes Compton, Patric Lane, Mary Churchill. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Social Media from the university and College Perspective: What are the Implications?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mary Churchill</span>: University of Venus--GenX women in higher ed--tired of being silenced; junior faculty were told that they were like children.<br />The most compelling piece in social media was having a story to tell.<br />Making sure that writers were in different countries, where they had different audiences; this helped to bring in new writers. Huge diversity of authors and issues.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">5:30PM: James Compton</span>, U Western Ontario [President of Faculty Association]: Collective bargaining. Faculty Association web site; creation of Facebook Page (launched about 2 weeks before strike deadline). Op-ed piece in student newspaper "I [heart] librarians"; worked very well on web site & elsewhere. Lots of people within the librarian community across Canada joined this page. With faculty it was a different scenario, Facebook site didn't do anything helpful. Difference in cohorts; librarians all know each other, a small community; they come together to support each other. The faculty didn't have the same existing real-world social network to tap into.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">5:42PM: Patric Lane</span>: Health & Science editor at UNC Chapel Hill. Former journalist--bringing the "Voice of the Devil's Advocate". :-)<br />Many people are still not very familiar with social media.<br />Positive benefits of social media [Mark Twain quote]? "[Social media] is fatal to prejudice, bigotry..." Like travel.<br />"Digital Natives"? [Note: he seems to be using this term uncritically; and I know many of us would disagree with this!]<br />Continuing the metaphor of travel...help people navigate. Build a social media presence/s; you need to help people find the channels that will prove useful to them. Practical tools: at UNC, a social media directory helps people to find what they need.<br />"Speak the language clearly": To reach an audience, don't use jargon.<br />Other destinations: How to draw in social media "travellers"?<br />Required skills and experience: to make a case for proper use of social media...extreme cat-herding; built-in institutional and social GOS; Devil's advocate; ability to boil watched pots.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">5:51PM: Alfred Hermida</span> on social media--representing ourselves in a specific way; blurring the professional and personal. How does our social media "personality" show as a representation of self to peers, students, etc.<br />Conversations: all archived, searchable, retrievable.<br />Sharing: at the heart of social media; being social implies some kind of exchange. Social media as the "gift economy". Extends the "reach" of your academic research. But there's more to this than just promotion. Who are your contacts in the network? Groups have different interests; share links to jobs, because students might be looking. Colleagues might be interested in research you come across.<br />Relationships: How we connect and extend ourselves to different people. Nature of connections determines the "what" and the "how" of social interaction.<br />What is your network expecting from you?<br />All factors come together as part of our reputation on social media. How do we rate our social media reputation? In some ways it's all about peer evaluation. How do we assign value to what we do on social media and how we do it? How does this relate to other professional activity?aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-80389242804237967062011-06-07T06:55:00.002-04:002011-06-07T07:05:48.762-04:00Communication, not Edutainment<h1 style="font-weight: normal; font-style: italic;"><span><span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span class="by"><br /></span></span></span></span></h1><h1 style="font-weight: normal; font-style: italic;"> </h1>This entry was originally posted on <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university_of_venus/communication_not_edutainment">March 3, 2011</a>, at <a href="http://uvenus.org/">University of Venus blog</a>, Blog U, Inside Higher Ed.<br /><p>How do we, as tutorial leaders or professors, deal with the revelation that students find classes or entire subject areas "boring?" And to what extent is it our responsibility to get them "interested?" These were questions that came to mind as I read Itir Toksöz’s <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/popup/blogs/university_of_venus/academic_boredom">recent UVenus post </a>about “academic boredom”. While she was discussing the boredom she experiences in conversation with colleagues, my first thought was that boredom is not just (potentially) a problem for and with academics, but also for students. </p><p>I see boredom as something other than a mere lack of interest. I think of it as a stand-in for frustration, which can, in turn, stem from a sense of exclusion from the material, from the discussion, from the class, from understanding the point of it all; ultimately an exclusion from the enjoyment of learning. This can happen when the material is too challenging, or when the student doesn’t really want to be in the class for some reason.</p><p>Boredom is sometimes about fear, the fear of failing and looking “stupid” in front of the instructor and one’s peers. In other cases it can also be a symptom that someone is far beyond the discussion and in need of a deeper or a more challenging conversation. All these things can be called “boredom” but often they are more like communicative gaps in need of bridging.</p><p>In other words, boredom is often a mask for something else. We need to remove this mask, because of the negative effects of boredom on the learning environment and process. It causes people to "tune out" from what's happening, and in almost every case it creates or is accompanied by resentment for the teacher/professor and/or for the other students. As a psychological problem, this makes boredom one of the greatest puzzles of teaching, and one of those problems that most demands attention.</p><p>It’s even more important to uncover the causes of boredom now that many students have access to wireless Internet and to Blackberries and iPhones, in the classroom. Professors and TAs complain that students are less attentive than ever while in class, because of this attachment to their devices—something I’ve encountered first-hand with my current tutorial group. </p><p>I think the attachment to gadgetry comes not from the technology itself, but from the students. In my blog I've written about the issue with students using technology to "tune out" during lectures, and they do it in tutorial as well; they're "present, yet absent". To understand this behaviour we need to keep in mind that the lure of the online (social) world is reasonable from the students’ perspective. Popular media and established social networks are accessible and entertaining, and provide positive feedback as well as a sense of comfortable familiarity. Learning is hard work, and the academic world is often alienating, difficult, and demanding. It's all-too-easy to crumple under the feeling of failure or exclusion. Facebook is welcoming and easy to use, while critical theory is not.</p><p>The other side of this equation is that in the process of negotiating and overcoming "boredom" there's a certain point at which I can meet students halfway, as it were—but I can't go beyond that point. Like everything else in teaching and learning, boredom is a two-way street, and the instructor is the one who needs to maintain the boundary of responsibility. I'm not there merely to provide an appealing performance, which leads to superficial “engagement.” I’m not “edutainment”.</p><p>However, I think it's part of my job when teaching to "open a door" to a topic or theory or set of ideas. I can't make you walk through that door (horse to water, etc.) but I can surely do my best to make sure you have the right address and a key that fits the lock. And that means using different strategies if the ones I choose don’t seem to be working.</p><p>Holding this view about boredom certainly doesn’t mean I’ve solved the problems with student attention in class; I’m reminded of that frequently. It just means I have an approach to dealing with the problem that treats their boredom as something for which there’s mutual responsibility. In an ideal learning environment there must also be mutual respect—but unfortunately mutual “boredom” is easier and often wins the day. My hope is to help cultivate the former by finding ways of unraveling the latter.</p>aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-12606613261765322152011-06-06T20:51:00.001-04:002011-06-06T21:40:56.907-04:00Connecting the Dots: Knowledge, Communication, Science, History"He says lie down, shut up, take your clothes off... you do."<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burke_%28science_historian%29">James Burke</a>'s description of the authority of doctors provides an example of why I enjoy his perspective on history: it's a blunt, humourous and--for all intents and purposes--accurate representation of our trust in the medical system, and by extension (I'm sure Burke would add) an indication of our faith in science itself.<br /><br />The description is provided in "What the Doctor Ordered", episode six of Burke's series <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0199208/"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Day the Universe Changed</span></a>. In this episode, Burke discusses the establishment of a doctor-centered medical expertise via the military surgeons of the French Revolution, and the development of systems of bureaucratic efficiency that are echoed in today's managerialist institutional governance.<br /><br />Burke's "connectivist" approach is what I enjoy about his series, and I've come to realise that it's a quality I enjoy in a number of theorists who have informed my own way of thinking--particularly <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Innis">Harold Innis</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault">Michel Foucault</a>. Innis and Foucault might seem like an odd couple to put in a room together. While questions of knowledge--not just epistemology, but also about economies of knowledge--are at the heart of the matter for both authors, their views on the subject differ theoretically. Yet as intellectuals they seem to share a fascination with the processes and mechanisms of societal and civilisational change and, not coincidentally, with communication and media--from Foucault's fascination with language and its "formations" to Innis' sweeping historical accounts of communication technologies. Both authors betray a concern with the organisation of power, and they both combine this with the investigation of <span style="font-style: italic;">ways</span> of knowing and the (possible, and historically contingent) instrumentalities of knowledge. This encompassing interest is what leads them to politics, to culture, to economics and to the rituals and problems of social organisation and social life over time.<br /><br />For Burke, there is the same concern with knowledge and its use. The "connections" made are between the grand abstractions of theory and the one-off solutions to pressing demands of everyday life, with an emphasis on the complex and quirky effects of circumstance, politics, greed, curiosity, religion, objects and technologies, and the new social relations engendered by (and engendering) everything else. In other words, historical messiness: not as a <span style="font-style: italic;">deviation</span> from the kind of theorising provided by the "grand narratives", but rather an attempt to theorise the messiness <span style="font-style: italic;">as is</span>, to trace historical developments as emergent and interconnected in multiple, multidimensional ways, and from which patterns develop in any case--just not always predictably or in ways that seem to "fit".<br /><br />Take Burke's narrative of medicine: theory and practice, another persistent divide, had to be brought into a working relationship in order for medicine to take on the shape it has today. In other words, surgeons who practiced in the field became doctors who taught what they'd learned to others, and they taught it in <span style="font-style: italic;">institutional</span> environments. Additionally, the doctor had to become an expert, with control over the patient based not on coercive power but on <span style="font-style: italic;">knowledge</span>. Knowledge was generated in new environments and in new ways--the hospitals, built to house large numbers of sick people according to their ailments, provided the evidential input (in the form of patients) for observation, description and classification--all of which was recorded. Statistical analysis, a new mathematical tool, was brought to bear on this data as medical experts sought numerical patterns that could describe and explain (and predict!) the physical world. And for the first time, the <span style="font-style: italic;">patient</span> became just that--an object, or even a collection of symptoms, to be acted upon by medical technologies.<br /><br />The nineteenth-century concern for numbers was influenced by other developments--an example of which is the one Burke points to, the overpopulation of English cities during the (second) industrial revolution. In other words, a "mass" urban society was confronted with the epidemic of cholera, which required a radical solution. The answer they found involved the use of numbers to track human activity and correlate it with disease (early epidemiology, and the famous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Snow_%28physician%29">London water-pump</a>).<br /><br />This development, which ultimately pointed to the mobilisation of numbers to make change (including to the landscape of London), was relevant in multiple fields of activity in the nineteenth century including education. Numbers became more important because there was simply more of everything: more people living in crowded cities, more patients collected together in larger hospitals, more students in the schools. It was hard to get a grip on all those people, never mind finding a way of getting them to act in the right ways at the right times--and the more people there were, the more you needed to get them to act the right way, if anything was going to work at all. The connection between nations and numbers is exemplified by the <a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=statistics">roots of the word "statistics"</a>.<br /><br />Thus Burke argues, "the transition by medicine from bedside to hospital to chemistry is complete. And with it, the disappearance of the patient from our story. His complaint, once voiced personally and authoritatively, is now reduced to a string of numbers on a computer terminal." Burke views the developing medical profession as the beginning of expansive influence for forms of numeric governance. The latter took on an authority that was to extend to numerous areas of our lives--articulated through the use of statistics, correlations, causes and effects. The expertise of doctors is what preserves life, <span style="font-style: italic;">our</span> lives, hence our acceptance of its authority. The (manageable) "population" is born, and here there is a strong connection to Foucault's theories of governance (bio-politics in particular) and his discussions of "medicalisation".<br /><br />In the final episode of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078588/">Connections</a> (series 1), James Burke gestures at a linear wall chart of the "History of Agriculture" and articulates his central thesis: "<span style="font-style: italic;">This</span> makes you think in straight lines. And if <span style="font-style: italic;">today</span> doesn't happen in straight lines [...] why should the past have?" Burke's question has implications for the pursuit of (instrumental) knowledge--implications that are clearest in the context of the contemporary university and its shifting position in a network of knowledge "production". What assumptions might be undermined by this view of innovation, in a socio-political landscape so littered with both past accounts and future plans for "strategic" discovery? In what ways might national governments, for example--ever-more dependent upon marketable "innovation" and the development of policy that leads to this profitable result--come to implement/reiterate linear narratives of "progress"?<br /><br />The search for a successful template for development, or for a proven path to prosperity in uncertain economic times, is constrained by risk. This reminds me of one last point from James Burke (<a href="http://youtu.be/S0Q5AUJT_zk">Connections, series 1, episode 1</a>): knowledge of the future tends to bring power over the present. But what role might there be for a re-assessment of the messy, non-linear past?<br /><br />--------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Some references for the above topic: James Burke "<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/JamesBurkeReConnections_0">Re-Connections</a>", a series of recent interviews; <a href="http://youtu.be/UtWVfTiQQW8">The Day the Universe Changed</a>; <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=c53DEY3-qtcC&dq=To+the+clinic&num=4&client=internal-uds&source=gbs_navlinks_s">The Birth of the Clinic</a> and <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/The_order_of_things.html?id=7z0nXi4R8m4C">The Order of Things</a> by Michel Foucault; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_and_Communications">Empire and Communications</a> and <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/The_bias_of_communication.html?id=nEXqB_KfxjgC">The Bias of Communication</a> by Harold Innis; <a href="http://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&tbo=1&q=marshall+McLuhan&btnG=Search+Books">various by Marshall McLuhan</a> (James Burke indirectly quotes McLuhan on a regular basis).aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-73554717819752203522011-05-25T08:06:00.008-04:002011-07-03T17:13:00.437-04:00Leading the PackTime for a tidbit of self-promotion--on Friday, May 6, I was lucky enough to be a panelist in a "live" online discussion on the Guardian.co.uk site, which has a special section for postsecondary education. The topic of the day was "How do you promote female leadership in higher education?". You can check out the "<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2011/may/24/women-leadership-higher-education-best?CMP=twt_gu">Q&A best bits</a>", which are a kind of summary of what each panelist contributed to the discussion. The full discussion with over 250 "comments" is available <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2011/may/04/gender-equality-female-leadership-higher-education">here</a>.<br /><br />Thankfully I can say that in sharing the links to our panel, I'm also promoting the other participants, all of whom were more experienced and knowledgeable than myself! Many thanks to <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/mary_churchill">Mary Churchill</a> of <a href="http://uvenus.org/editorial-collective/mary-churchill/">University of Venus</a> for "recruiting" me for the panel.<br /><br />If you click through and take a look at the short version of the discussion, you'll notice that I made a point of highlighting the structural nature of women's work in the university, e.g. the fact that certain work tends to be recognised as more "feminine", including teaching and low-level "service"--a phenomenon not confined to the university. I also emphasised the historicity of the problem, that universities have for thousands of years been elite institutions operating in patriarchal societies.<br /><br />I'm reminded of that last point as I research a presentation (and paper) I'm writing about gender, science, and meritocracy (using the Canadian <a href="http://updatednews.ca/2010/05/18/canada%E2%80%99s-200-million-lure-pulls-in-19-big-name-researchers/">CERC program</a> as my example). It's a testament to the tenacity of gender norms/ideologies that we can still blame women <a href="http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/fyi/hiring-based-solely-on-merit-so-naturally-theres-uproar-94646589.html">for lacking "merit"</a> when they "fail" to achieve high-ranking positions in scientific communities. To me it hardly seems like a matter of "excellence", when for so many centuries women have been excluded from participation in knowledge creation in its formal settings. Yet the arguments persist, as I've seen quite clearly in the <a href="http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/05/19/tasha-kheiriddin-stephen-harper-woman-hater-part-ii-the-gripes-of-academia.aspx">news articles and comments</a> I've been analysing.<br /><br />Plus ça change...<br /><br />[EDIT, June 6, 2011] Here's the link to the <a href="http://prezi.com/2ycqkl94qpt8/most-excellent-dudes-gender-meritocracy-media-coverage-of-the-canada-excellence-research-chairs/">Prezi for my CERC talk</a> on June 1st. I hope you enjoy it!aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-79919078949302359982011-05-08T10:00:00.000-04:002011-05-08T10:59:56.517-04:00Tech Round-UpIt’s time for another technology update, as a follow-up to the two <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2010/10/technology-and-research-part-1-my.html">previous</a> <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2010/10/technology-and-research-part-2-tweeting.html">posts</a> on the tools I’ve been using for research and for connecting with others. Since I’ve been checking out a number of new and nifty tools recently, I thought I’d share the goods.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.diigo.com/index">Diigo</a>: an important change I’ve made is a switch from Del.icio.us to Diigo. When Yahoo! announced that they would cease to develop Del.icio.us, there was a sort of general uproar from committed users (myself included—I’d come to rely on it for bookmarking articles for media analyses) since we were afraid of losing such a great tool. Even though it became apparent that Yahoo! would not shut down Del.icio.us, I decided to switch to another bookmarking tool for the sake of stability. I admit I’d also been tempted by the <a href="http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2010/12/28-delicious-alternatives-to-delicious.html">many options</a> available. As it turns out other sites, like Diigo, have been developed more than Del.icio.us and so they provide helpful features such as highlighting on web pages, caching pages for later reference, and the option to add notes to a page (which others can view). Most of these features are only fully available with Premium service, but I’m considering buying in (it’s only about $5 per month).<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php">Scrivener</a>: Thanks to <a href="http://thethesiswhisperer.wordpress.com/"><span class="bio">Dr Inger Mewburn</span></a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/thesiswhisperer">@thesiswhisperer)</a> for continual praise of Scrivener that prodded me into giving it a try. I think I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of its capabilities, but already I love the way I can create a “project” in Scrivener and include not only Word files but also .pdfs, images, web pages (html files) and even sound files—all relevant research materials in one layout. Scrivener’s handy “splits” feature allows you to view two files at once in the same visual space, invaluable when you’re looking at information on web pages or copying notes into a draft of a paper (for example). For those of us who need to organise things visually, Scrivener has an iTunes-like format that allows you to places files and folders in easy-to-access order, to easily add/create new files and folders and add documents, and to write different sections with the full structure in view. Another great thing about Scrivener is that you can download a 30-day trial, which I did, and that helped convince me that it was worth purchasing a copy. Bonus: if you pay for Scrivener you can install it on multiple computers without paying any additional fees. The bad news: it's only for Mac, as is another suggested tool, <a href="http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/devonthink/">DevonThink</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Below: an example (screen-shot) of a Scrivener project layout, showing the outline for a paper in sections and also a series of .pdf files of articles I've used in the research.</span><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEzs-y_EzWw7JpW6Rhg7-x37wL9xNbH980n6d_fRKkyxKuQkyQbaJDXkeOF9BQcUdY-2WIfwlFuiuawamjZpFrP_SCBJ-JmwkqEJ4M9go5nprFQI64_L-Its30wZcjD8s7RKhyLpwar_Y3/s1600/scrivener+1.png"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 239px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEzs-y_EzWw7JpW6Rhg7-x37wL9xNbH980n6d_fRKkyxKuQkyQbaJDXkeOF9BQcUdY-2WIfwlFuiuawamjZpFrP_SCBJ-JmwkqEJ4M9go5nprFQI64_L-Its30wZcjD8s7RKhyLpwar_Y3/s400/scrivener+1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604354092880785906" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://prezi.com/">Prezi</a>: I first saw a demonstration of Prezi at the <a href="http://www8.georgetown.edu/college/gurt/2011/">Georgetown University Round Table</a> back in March of this year. As an alternative presentation format (alternative to Powerpoint, that is), I immediately liked the look of Prezi and was eager to find it online and try it out. Once I got going with the site (Prezi is not downloadable software, rather it’s an online tool) I enjoyed the way in which it facilitated my thinking as well as the creation of my presentation; whereas Powerpoint always makes me feel boxed in, with Prezi I can move objects around to see how they might “look” in another order, or indeed how ideas might make more sense in a different sequence. The one complaint I’ve heard from those who aren’t keen on Prezi is that it makes them feel “seasick” or nauseated because of the “zooming” motion that happens as the program moves from one “slide” to the next. So far I haven’t given any presentations using Prezi, but I’m attending a conference at the end of the month and will give it a try for at least one of the two presentations I’m planning. I’ll be keeping the zooming to a minimum, given the complaints about it.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.scribd.com/">Scribd</a>: Though I haven’t used it much, I realised the potential usefulness of Scribd when I came across a cache of letters and other documents relating to my dissertation research. In order to download from Scribd, you have to upload documents of your own; this wasn’t a problem since I was able to connect through Facebook and complete an upload easily (taking into account the relevant copyright restrictions). I think as a document sharing site Scribd actually has a lot of potential and I’m gradually starting to upload more items (generally reports from Statistics Canada and from think tanks, relating to post-secondary education).<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.zotero.org/">Zotero</a>: Zotero is a citation manager that works both as an add-on to Firefox and as a web site through which users can sync their account across multiple computers (great for me, since I use a desktop and a laptop); it’s similar to sites like Del.icio.us and Diigo in that way. Zotero was suggested to me by a number of people, but after an initial try I found it clunky and didn’t see how it would be of any use to me. Recently I was prompted by <a href="http://collegereadywriting.blogspot.com/">Dr Lee Skallerup</a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/readywriting">@readywriting</a>) to give Zotero a second chance, and thankfully this time I’ve figured out where it fits in to my personal media/technology ecology. I use Zotero now for the search process, so that as I browse online I can create citations without having to go back and document everything later. (If you’re not keen on Zotero, recommended alternatives include <a href="http://www.mendeley.com/">Mendeley</a> and <a href="http://www.endnote.com/">Endnote</a>).<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.dipity.com/">Dipity</a>: Suggested to me by John Dupuis (<a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/dupuisj">@dupuisjohn</a>) of York University’s Steacie Library, Dipity is a site for constructing timelines. This became important for me because of the nature of the research I’m doing for my dissertation—i.e. I am mapping institutional developments onto provincial and federal policy and political trends, so for me it really helped to be able to see those things in a kind of linear, comparative way. My “Post-Secondary Education in Canada” timeline is still very much under construction, but I think it will eventually be a time-saving tool for others looking at the same topic.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://us.moo.com/">Moo</a>: A final nod goes to Moo, not technically a “tool” but rather a site through which you can design your own business cards, post-cards, and so on. I wrote a bit about Moo in a <a href="http://panoptikal.blogspot.com/2011/04/sidetracked-cards.html">post in my other blog</a>, where you can also see the images I chose to use. I love this idea of having my photos in this miniature form that I can hand out to new acquaintances. The cards arrived the other day in the mail, and they look lovely; I can’t wait to start dishing them out.aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-10721234893748606682011-05-07T12:15:00.004-04:002011-07-04T09:53:14.479-04:00Market Fail: UK Attempts at Marketisation Bring a Cascade of TroublesMany articles over the past little while have been looking at the failure of government marketisation efforts in England. Following last year’s Browne Review (which recommended that university fee limits be lifted), the UK government dropped the policy bomb that universities had <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10238788">long feared</a>—massive funding cuts (including 40% cuts to teaching), a drop from £7.1 billion to £4.2 billion, and a marketisation scheme to be implemented through raising the “cap” on tuition fees <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11483638">to £9,000 from £3,290</a>. The idea was that universities would voluntarily differentiate their fee levels in order to capture different student demographics/groups, creating a quasi-market. However, when faced with the option of setting fees of "up to" £9,000, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/apr/20/tuition-fee-charges-universities-2012">the majority of universities opted to charge the highest possible price</a>. They did this in spite of the government’s threats to penalise them in various ways for inhibiting accessibility.<br /><br />Why has the UK government's marketisation scheme failed so dramatically with regards to fee levels? Surely the less well-known universities knew that in claiming the maximum possible tuition, they would now be charging the same fee as heavyweights such as Oxford and Cambridge. The government assumed that universities would naturally want to compete for various student “markets”, relying on institutions to create an appropriate distribution. However, such a tactic doesn’t ensure that a market will emerge. That outcome still depends on the behaviour of individual institutions. Since universities operate in competition for prestige at least as much as for revenue (the two are closely connected), their “behaviour” as actors in a market is unlikely to mirror that of (e.g.) a pet food company or an automotive corporation. So the relationship between price and prestige is undoubtedly one factor in the equation; no-one wants to be a "low-cost provider".<br /><br />In keeping with this logic, students do not behave like regular consumers when "shopping" for a university degree. They don't necessarily seek out what's affordable or reasonable in terms of cost; they are making an estimate on the future returns from their short-term investment, and education is not something that can be traded for a "better model" later on when one has more money to spend. Students are in a bind of their own, with those lacking present income being encouraged to take on debt in order to finance their future employability.<br /><br />Lastly, it's very difficult to create “economies of scale” in education (in my opinion it can’t be done, but that’s a whole other blog post). Thus universities cannot easily expand enrolment while also keeping tuition low, offering "discount education"--though this has happened to a certain extent with for-profit, online providers, mostly in the United States.<br /><br />Another important aspect of the UK government’s plan was to remove funding from <span style="font-style: italic;">teaching</span>, already an under-valued aspect of university work (international rankings are based on research); and from what I understand, this funding was taken only from <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/oct/20/spending-review-university-teaching-cuts">the arts, social sciences, and humanities</a>. But it seems that that the very universities that depend most on those enrollments will now have to raise tuition even more to make up for the significant loss of revenue--more so than, say, a university focussed heavily on the sciences. Is the UK government asking students to pay <span style="font-style: italic;">more</span> for degrees that they (the government) have demonstrably judged to be less valuable-? (NB, I don't personally believe that degrees outside STEM areas are less <span style="font-style: italic;">inherently</span> valuable; but they are certainly less marketable according to the logic being employed.)<br /><br />As it turns out, in most cases students will pay the same (increased) price for their degrees no matter where they choose to enroll; but clearly they won’t all be getting a better “product”. One reason is that the tuition money is replacing government funding that had been cut, rather than augmenting current income in order to increase “quality”. If the funding estimate of cost per student was considered insufficient to begin with, then it makes sense that universities would raise the level of tuition to the maximum possible (£9,000). So it seems there might be a fundamental disagreement between universities and government about the “cost” of educating a student in a certain discipline or area of study (not a surprise).<br /><br />On a more theoretical level, I don't believe it's possible for students to “receive” a uniform education since every person brings something different to, and takes something unique from, their educational experience.<br /><br />Overall I think this is a good example of some of the problems with trying to marketise education as a “product” with an inherent economic/monetary value. Universities in Britain are now stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place: if they charge higher fees (i.e. above £6,000), they are more likely to be penalised by the government for inhibiting accessibility. The necessity for this stop-gap measure demonstrates the failure of the initial policy to establish the desired equilibrium. Such radical policy change within a short period is likely to have deep effects on the British universities, including changes to student decision-making and to the faculty workforce.aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-65523321115125685612011-04-19T20:28:00.003-04:002011-04-20T08:04:53.757-04:00A sticky issue: (Post-secondary) education and the Canadian Federal election[<span style="font-style: italic;">Full disclosure: in the 2008 federal election campaign, I worked on the communications committee for Gerard Kennedy's campaign in Parkdale-High Park, Toronto.</span>]<br /><br />-------------------------------------------------<br /><br /> With the announcement of the date of Canada's next federal election (May 2nd), amid the sound and the fury we have already seen the point made that education can (and should) become an election issue.<br /><br /> Those readers who are not Canadian or have never lived in Canada may find this statement nonsensical or at least somewhat odd. How could education not be an issue in a nationwide election? The answer is that in Canada, education is under provincial jurisdiction (along with health care and social services). So Canada is one of the only countries--if not the only country--in the world lacking a national office, department or ministry of education. In fact, education is constitutionally relegated to the jurisdiction of the provinces, so federal intervention is never direct (though it certainly does occur). This complication was explained well by Carson Jerema in a recent <a href="http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2011/03/25/our-economy-now-runs-on-ideas/">blog post</a> along with some predictions about the major parties' proposed education policies.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What makes education a difficult issue in a Canadian federal election?</span><br /><br /> Election issues for universities could be described as a series of long-term problems around which policy choices and political platforms tend to revolve. Some examples include:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">…Authority along institutional, provincial, and federal lines.</span><br /><br /> As I mentioned above, the federal government cannot intervene directly in post-secondary education, though they do enjoy indirect influence through their control over such areas as student assistance (<a href="http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/learning/canada_student_loan/about/index.shtml">loans</a> and grants), science and technology policy, research and infrastructure funding via the Tri-Council (SSHRC, NSERC, and CIHR) and Canada Foundation for Innovation, and also language policy, education for indigenous peoples, training and employment initiatives, and immigration. At the same time, because the federal government deals with national economic policy, it has a direct interest in the development of “human capital” (an educated workforce) through higher education institutions in particular.<br /><br /> This is why proposals such as those found in the NDP’s <a href="http://www.ndp.ca/platform">election platform</a>, for example, are problematic. Funding for post-secondary operating budgets comes from “transfers” to the provinces from the federal government. But to assert that an $800 million dedicated transfer can be used specifically to reduce tuition costs, probably steps over two lines—provincial, and institutional—at once. From what I can tell this is a policy goal that couldn’t be implemented from the federal level.<br /><br /> The issue goes beyond merely having to avoid any talk of university tuition fees. For example, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff wants every student who is qualified—i.e. every student who has high enough grades—to be able to attend university. This is a fine goal, but because his plan cannot encompass high schools, he cannot guarantee that an increasing focus on grades will not merely result in an increase to grade inflation, something that has been discussed anecdotally for years and for which more solid evidence has been presented in the United States (at both secondary and post-secondary levels). So while Ignatieff’s plan would help, it would help those who received high grades without also ensuring that all high schools are preparing these students adequately for university-level study. Accessibility in one way does not mean accessibility in all ways; and the lack of communication and collaboration between universities and high schools needs to be addressed through collaboration between all levels of government.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">…Targeted funding vs. egalitarian funding; elite/focused vs. mass/dispersed models.</span><br /><br /> In recruitment for both students and faculty, elite (merit-based) funding programs involve funneling a larger amount of funding to the most competitive candidates, including most recently an emphasis on those recruited from overseas since the “market” for talent is now a global one. In research, targeted programs (used by institutions as well as by governments) tend to emphasize certain areas as strategic priorities and direct funding them to accordingly. The federal <a href="http://nghoussoub.com/2011/04/18/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-in-tories-research-policy/">Conservatives</a> have in the past focused <a href="http://nghoussoub.com/2011/04/10/could-the-research-community-cost-harper-a-majority-government/">heavily</a> on this practice, especially via the Tri-Council. One example would be the addition of extra funding to SSHRC that was reserved specifically for “business-related” projects.<br /><br /> The Liberals’ proposed “<a href="http://www.liberal.ca/issues/newsroom/news-release/michael-ignatieff-announces-canadian-learning-passport/">Learning Passport</a>” is, on the other hand, designed to spread non-repayable funding over a broader base of students with an emphasis on financial need and accessibility. But it still doesn't address the full extent of the problem faced by 30 years of planning for an unsustainable system (i.e. continued expansion of enrollment without parallel increases to funding), since the amount available to students barely makes a dent in the overall cost of their education.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">…The research/teaching “problem” and expansion of the university system.</span><br /><br /> Expansion is not sustainable in the long-term if the ideal is an <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2010/12/what-value-for-degree-part-1-relative.html">elite model</a> funded primarily by government contributions; yet this model seems to continue without serious systemic re-planning even at the provincial level. In the United States we can see a somewhat unhealthy version of marketized, massified systems, wherein online, for-profit programs are mopping up those students who cannot gain acceptance to quality public and private non-profit schools. In the U.K and particularly in England, the current policy chaos reflects the same conundrum—rapid expansion of enrollments with a very high level of funding from the government, leading to a series of deep targeted cuts (to teaching, primarily) and an extreme quasi-marketization policy that has so far failed in creating a differentiated university “market”. In Canada the situation hasn’t yet reached such an intense level, but neither has the answer been found to the question of widespread accessibility and quality; based on the evidence I’d say that marketization is not an answer, but it’s what is usually proposed.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What makes education difficult as an election issue--in general?</span><br /><br /> Governments employ a two-sided logic in promoting PSE, arguing for it as both a public (social) good, and a private (individual) good for students and families. These arguments are important because over time, students have come to pay a proportionally larger amount of the cost of their education in the form of tuition and other fees. As PSE becomes more of a hefty investment, students want to know that this cost will generate a “return” (a private good) in the form of increased job prospects. This is why we see so many news reports discussing the monetary gains of degree-holders over a the course of a lifetime. As well as promoting individual gains, governments also operate with the assumption that a more highly educated population will benefit national economic goals; education is thus seen as primarily “economic” in both arguments. Yet as a personal investment PSE does not pay off for each person in the way the collective investment (of many people) will ultimately pay off for the government. Education is a highly personal and uneven “product” that is marketed as universally beneficial.<br /><br /> Another political issue is that people who don’t already have post-secondary credentials are less likely to vote on or care about education; they may even (justifiably) resent the idea that “everyone” should have a post-secondary credential, because it demonstrates less respect or apparent value to whatever role they occupy, and because they may well have been excluded from PSE themselves. In fact there is an entire discourse about university/educational “waste” of taxpayer dollars, in particular that students waste money and professors’ salaries are too high, and indeed that public institutions are in general overly wasteful. Sometimes this converges with the idea that “they” (university-education people and academics in particular) “think they’re better than us”.<br /><br /> Even those who do have a PSE credential are unlikely to care about this issue after their university or college days are over, unless they have university-age children and are currently liable for the bill. And that phase passes within the term of a government, making post-secondary education a very difficult issue to argue in the public political realm in terms of seeking new funding from governments (and also tuition increases). Unlike health care, it’s not an issue in which many people tend to take a sustained/lifelong interest.<br /><br /> Lastly, there’s the student vote, the one connected directly to education issues as a part of campaign platforms. Every election “youth apathy”, in the form of low voter turnout, is decried (students are also conflated with “youth” in general). This election we’ve seen the issue highlighted in a new way: with “<a href="http://www.google.ca/search?q=canada+vote+mobs&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a">vote mobs</a>”, inspired by the now notorious <a href="http://youtu.be/kJajpU_boTE">videos</a> produced by <a href="http://youtu.be/MhgYhcTl95w">Rick Mercer</a>. There’s been much speculation as to whether this will actually improve the turn-out of young voters. I hope it does. But I also notice that the focus has been primarily on universities and students, and not on the youth who stand most to gain from electing a more progressive government—those who are unemployed, under-privileged, and have least access to education and training (and to political information).<br /><br /> In sum, there’s always somewhat of a Canadian quandary come election time: how can advocates, activists and "stakeholders" make education a political issue, in a meaningful way, during this federal election?<br /><br /> Will the remainder of the campaign provide any answers on this count?aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-18542725072778750082011-03-24T15:49:00.026-04:002011-03-25T17:38:15.727-04:00Future TenseI haven't been writing much in this blog for the past six weeks or so. After posting more than usual in January, I took a bit of a break to catch up on other work (blogging takes it out of me, for some reason!) and to attend and present at the Georgetown University Round Table in Washington, D.C. from March 11th to 13th.<br /><br />Here I'll catch up by writing an extra-long post for your enjoyment ;-)<br /><br />----------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br />Perhaps because it’s grading season—mid-term exams and assignments have been rolling in and TAs and course directors are dealing with the results—over the past few weeks I’ve been seeing a lot of frustrated talk from academics on Twitter and <a href="http://www.excal.on.ca/news/ta-under-fire-after-facebook-blunder/">Facebook</a>. Some of it’s angry, some of it’s more anguished than anything else; but the common thread is that we’re all feeling as if we can’t “reach” students, and that students in turn aren’t doing their share of the work involved in the educational process.<br /><br />Part of the problem is the way I just defined “education” in that last sentence. I invoked the notion of education as a “process” involving effort from both the person assigned as “teacher” and the people being “taught”; I don’t assume the students are the only ones doing the learning. But as I’ve argued in the past, a consumerist model of education—which encourages students to view education as either a service or a product or some mutation that blends both (“service product”)—undermines the notion of active participation because it assumes a strong element of “delivery” rather than “co-production”. We had a discussion about this in a recent tutorial where I pushed the knowledge-as-object metaphor to its ridiculous limit by drawing on the image of a “basket of knowledge” that we could pass around the room and from which students could simply take what they needed.<br /><br />Apart from this definitional misunderstanding that causes so many conflicting assumptions about responsibilities and self-conduct, I suspect there are even bigger issues at work. I like asking of students, “how did you know you should go to university?” The reason I ask is because I’m interested in where that decision came from, not just the “why” of it. When we ask “why did you come to university?”, the answer is usually predictable—“because without a degree I cannot get a job.” If we ask how the decision was made, responses are usually quite interesting, and they reflect the influence that parents, teachers and guidance counselors have on students’ decision-making processes.<br /><br />But what happens to the “work preparation” narrative when students realize that a university education is <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2010/12/what-value-for-degree-part-1-relative.html">no longer any guarantee</a> of employment, let alone the “dream jobs” that so many young people are encouraged to envision for themselves? I think this is where the whole arrangement starts to fall apart. You can tell students there are rewards (e.g. in the form of post-graduate employment options), and indeed the statistics continue to point to the financial benefits of PSE for graduates. But if you offer students no (clear) path to those rewards then the result is sometimes a disaffected nihilism towards learning. And one problem with university education is that is was never really designed to offer a clear path to employment.<br /><br />We need to get at the contradiction in the fact that students come to university because it's "necessary" to get ahead in life, yet in some cases they show little or no enthusiasm for university learning and confusion that there is no obvious connection between what happens in class and what they expect to happen at a job, later on. I think this is why we sometimes hear disparaging comments about how "undergrad is the new high school"--necessary, but not necessarily enjoyable or productive.<br /><br />I've been thinking a lot this year about why students <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university_of_venus/communication_not_edutainment">"tune out" during class</a> and tutorial, particularly when <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2010/10/down-side-of-technology-on-class-time.html">technology</a> shows up as a distraction from class. Larger social, economic and educational trends are one reason for effects such as these, for example the consumerist concept of education as "product" often correlates with students' focus on grades (outcomes) rather than learning (which often irritates professors and TAs).<br /><br />We can't take on those big issues alone, in one course, in one university; they're ongoing and need to be addressed and re-addressed by everyone. The question is how to navigate these currents when we're faced with the everyday "realities" and frustrations of teaching in universities--grammatically unsound assignments written in haste because students are working 20 or 30 hours a week alongside full-time study (so who's to blame?); flimsy excuses for skipped tutorials (who can we believe?); papers submitted weeks late without notifying the professor or TA that an extension was required (how could we know?); students "burning out" and disappearing without even dropping the course (what happened?); and on, and on.<br /><br />Now more than ever we're reminded that education is a collaborative effort, and behind that effort must be desire--the desire of the person "teaching" to assist, collaborate and convey; and that of the students, a hunger for knowledge based in questions about the world. Last night in class I talked about how I became interested in education and involved in politics, and how in my experience the key ingredient to success in university is to find some <span style="font-style: italic;">thing</span> about which you have critical questions, a boundless curiosity, a constant hankering, an "itch" that can only be scratched with learning. I think then the learning starts to drive itself.<br /><br />The difficulty lies in getting to those questions and issues, since their instrumentality for the future is obscure in the present. It's why I told my own story--because students lack narratives they can use to order their present experience, and the tools to construct their own potential narrative; so they find it hard to project into the future even though they are so focussed on it. This is an anxiety-producing state of affairs.<br /><br />New possibilities open up when we make the connections required to understand a story about <span style="font-style: italic;">how </span>something happened, rather than a description of what<span style="font-style: italic;"> is</span>. Maybe it's this causality that students crave, since they live in a world lacking the certainty with which their parents were so fortuitously blessed. The old stories about careers, adulthood and family no longer ring true in this era of instability, workforce "flexibility", debt and recession.<br /><br />Perhaps the universities should be places/spaces where we start telling new stories.<br /><br />------------------------------------------------<br /><br />"How do you get from here to the rest of the world?"<br />"I wish I knew."<br /><br />--From The Wire, S05 Episode 5aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-8750276268293505072011-03-07T12:43:00.005-05:002011-03-07T12:50:36.050-05:00Places of Learning<span style="font-style: italic;">This entry was originally posted on October 5, 2010 at <a href="http://uvenus.org/">University of Venus</a> blog on Inside Higher Ed [link </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university_of_venus/places_of_learning">here</a><span style="font-style: italic;">].</span><br /><br />I’ve always felt that the physical environment of educational institutions — their colours, their spaces, their architecture — is one of the least-considered elements in the constellation of educational “success factors,” though possibly the most pervasive one. <p>Take, for example, the graduate program in which I'm currently completing my PhD. Just before I began my degree, the Faculty of Education—in which my program is housed—was moved from a concrete tower in the centre of campus to a newly-renovated college building. This seemed like a fine plan; however, it wasn’t long after joining the program that I realized the re-design had been a failure. While the Pre-Service Department was housed on the airy, welcoming ground floor, the graduate students’ space, consisting primarily of a computer lab, was relegated to the basement. This separated the grad students from the Graduate Program office and faculty—who were now sequestered on the second floor.</p><p>You might be wondering: other than the inconvenience of stair-climbing, what’s wrong with this arrangement? Everyone is housed in the same building, at least, and it looks clean and efficient thanks to the renovation job.</p><p>The first problem is that while grad students can probably work in almost any room with a computer, housing them in the basement—which is referred to as “The Dungeon” by some program members—is a poor choice because they will spend more time in this room than most other students will spend on the ground floor. Providing a pleasant working environment means more people will use the lab facilities, and it gives grad students an additional reason to come to the department from off-campus. At a large and isolated commuter campus like ours, this is important, because it helps to create a communal environment and to foster the social and peer support that is so vital to graduate student success.</p><p>The second problem relates to the same issue: physically separating faculty members from graduate students makes it more difficult for students to have informal, serendipitous and social contact with professors. So assigning graduate student space to the basement, in a room which is well-equipped but sterile and detached, means adding distance to the existing (non-physical) chasm that often separates students from faculty. Not that the faculty space is well-designed either—it’s standard academic architecture, a loop of corridor lined on each side with offices, following the shape of the building. Most of the office doors are closed.</p><p>Part of keeping students in a program, keeping them “engaged” with classes and faculty and other students, involves creating a space where they can feel welcome and included. I feel strongly that educational architecture—the “place” of education—contributes to the kind of educational experience we have, from grade school all the way to the doctoral degree. Institutional architecture sends a message, and affects messages sent; it expresses an idea about the function of the environment it helps create. In the documentary <i>How Buildings Learn</i>, Stewart Brand suggests that while buildings may indeed “learn,” people also learn from buildings; our practices and habits, even our feelings, are shaped by our environments—and thus so is the work we do within them.</p><p>Amid the current cuts and crises in higher education, it may sound trite to offer this kind of critique. But with graduate school attrition generally hovering around 50%, universities should be taking more seriously the research about what helps students adapt to university life and to academic culture. The effects of physical space are very real. I think it’s no coincidence that in our program, students often find it difficult to “meet” a supervisor. After all, there are few real in-person opportunities to do so, outside of planned events and the classroom—relatively formal occasions.</p><p>While we can’t necessarily change the buildings we’re in, we can be sensitive to their use, to our adaptation to the context provided. And we can ask ourselves questions. What would the building look like if we began by asking <i>how people learn</i>? How do people meet each other and form learning relationships? If you could design your own workspace, your own learning space, what would it look like and why? This need not involve a major reconstruction project. If the university had taken these things into account before renovating our program space, the same amount could have been spent and things might have looked, and felt, very different.</p>aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-69802217762855791732011-02-20T20:43:00.008-05:002011-02-20T21:12:48.506-05:00The absurdity of numbers?A number of recent posts on Inside Higher Ed have highlighted national (U.S.) debates on post-secondary policy and its relation to Barack Obama's economic/policy plan. Obama has repeatedly emphasised the <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/26/obama_vows_to_protect_education_and_research_from_federal_budget_cuts">importance of education</a> and research funding, even as the <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/02/14/house_republicans_would_slash_pell_grants_research_and_americorps_in_2011">Tea Party have lobbied</a> the Republicans to try to reduce funding. Meanwhile legislation has been introduced for the purpose of regulating private, for-profit career colleges, and it’s being <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/02/18/house_debates_measure_to_block_education_department_from_enforcing_rule_on_for_profit_colleges">battled every step of the way</a> by the lobby groups associated with said colleges and by their political various allies. <br /><br />All these developments relate in some way to the pressure to increase enrollments and "completion" rates—what <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/02/16/scholars_debate_merits_of_completion_agenda">some</a> have referred to as the “<a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/08/16/obanion">completion agenda</a>”—from post-secondary institutions. And that imperative is about developing a “knowledge economy”, so that the United States can remain competitive in the assumed global zero-sum game in which national prosperity is at stake. <br /><br />In Canada, federal and provincial governments have taken up precisely the same strategy of pushing for more graduates, both in undergraduate and in graduate education (witness in Ontario the provincial Liberals’ goal to create 14,000 more graduate student spaces from 2002-3 levels, by 2010—see OCUFA, 2007).<br /><br /> Like others, I question the use of these kind of numbers as a means of gauging a nation's success at, or progress toward, developing a sustainable “knowledge economy”. Human capital may be available, but this doesn't mean that the “capital” will be put to use (i.e. that people, with their skills, will be able to find employment) in the immediate or near future. Are there sufficient job opportunities for those who make the “individual investment” in PSE, such that the investment will “pay off”? <br /><br />The numbers conceal a potential over-production of graduates through the assumption that more college/university degrees automatically means more access to gainful employment for all those who graduate, as well as producing a more "innovative" workforce. (I've previously written posts about <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2010/12/what-value-for-degree-part-1-relative.html">relative value</a> vs. <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2010/12/what-value-for-degree-part-2-inherent.html">inherent value</a> in education, and the policy implications.)<br /><br />The focus on these numbers also hides the uneven quality of mass post-secondary education and the unequally shared burden of its increasing cost. For example, in the United States the <a href="http://www.edtrust.org/dc/press-room/press-release/subprime-opportunity-high-dividends-low-baccalaureates-at-for-profit-col">for-profit career colleges</a> often market to traditionally under-privileged groups who cannot access more prestigious institutions, but who ironically end up paying hefty tuition fees anyway—and finding themselves burdened with debt by the time their studies are over. It’s a debt they have trouble re-paying due to difficulties with obtaining appropriate employment after graduation. <br /><br />Along with student “completion” comes the imperative to discover its causes, a search that has produced a whole range of <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/09/completion">new objects for measurement</a>. One example is the project to measure levels of “student engagement” (gauged by the National Survey of Student Engagement, NSSE). Tests of student learning “outcomes”, and the development of standardised curricular goals, are also related to this process of environmental assessment.<br /><br />Responsibility for failure must also be assigned, such as in <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/10/11/dropout">this article</a> where the author discusses reports that argue that “many American colleges are failing to graduate their students, at a time when the Obama administration and leading foundations are trying to ramp up the number of Americans earning a postsecondary credential.” So the university/college becomes a new target for critiques and for governmental interventions designed to ensure “quality” and positive “outcomes” for graduates.<br /><br />In some ways, the obsession with numbers is really just a sign that education and its “products” are considered to be more important than ever—for their economic value—and thus they become, increasingly, sites of scrutiny for a plethora of “publics”, including not only governments but also parents, students, employers, and the media. But focussing on and rewarding outcomes, usually “completion” as either a proportion of the eligible age cohort or of the national adult population overall, means that institutions are more likely to implement “quick” technocratic fixes to what is generally a much deeper structural problem. Do we really need more graduates who are struggling to find work and to alleviate debts? How can we create a situation where these graduates are more likely to be solvent and employed upon, or shortly after, finishing their PSE courses?<br /><br />A larger number of PSE graduates is only desirable, economically, if it produces the intended effect; but what we see instead could be an increase to the number of young people who are actually <span style="font-style: italic;">unable</span> to participate fully in this economy even though they may technically possess the credentials for doing so. Unless this issue is addressed, the "production" of more PSE graduates is much less likely to benefit either the national economy or the individual graduates themselves.<br /><br />Reference: OCUFA, 2007. <a href="http://notes.ocufa.on.ca/OCUFARsrch.nsf/9da1693cdc3d700f852573db006561fc/8d2312f7f11ff5ce852573da007817df?OpenDocument">Quality at risk: an assessment of the Ontario government’s plans for graduate education</a>.aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-43950848808686869752011-02-01T14:18:00.000-05:002011-02-01T15:13:01.759-05:00"Myths & Mismatches": Where from here?The last series of blog posts left me all blogged out for a couple of weeks, but I thought I'd offer a follow-up post regarding my thoughts on the e-course by Jo and Julie, on career planning and professional development, and a few other things.<br /><br />What I found helpful about the course was that it provided me something to respond to, and in the process I found myself thinking harder about my current decisions. And because I'm feeling "stuck" and unfocussed at the moment, this was a valuable exercise. I tried to imagine my self in a particular role, and asked: what would I look like doing this job? How is that going to happen? Where do my current actions take me in terms of that kind of goal? Fairly basic stuff, but I find writing it all down tends to help me with coherence and direction. And when I'm feeling lost, I like to focus on the tangible aims that make it easier to make decisions in the present--since they build towards something in the future.<br /><br />Some of the things I'm doing at the moment in order to provide myself direction--in a few different aspects of (academic) career development:<br /><br />Making a decision about an academic "subject area" in which I could work comfortably, i.e. as a member of a department or program or team. This sounds like a no-brainer, and for most people in a PhD program it hasn't been an issue since at least the MA level. But because of the way my interests have developed, choosing an "area" has been a less than straightforward process (my degrees are in Communication Studies, Linguistics, and Education).<br /><br />A related task is to work towards drawing my various projects into a well-articulated and coherent research "map" that works within that subject area. I have diverse interests, but diversity is only a strength if it's grounded in something stable like a good knowledge base, along with a plan regarding how the various pieces fit together and reinforce each other. I know well enough how everything is related, but I need to work actively to make those connections clear to others. This is important no matter what line of work I end up following.<br /><br />...Alongside the usual academic channels, I've been experimenting with using social media to meet new colleagues and develop professional relationships, to "network" and to share/publicise my own work, to develop opportunities for contributing to ongoing debates (such as writing articles for other blogs and web sites), and to keep up with news/issues in my fields. As a result, I'm thinking about blogging and other "public communication" as part of academics being "public intellectuals", not just professors or employees of the university. I'd like my blog to be a way to share my ideas even as I'm developing them in other ways (e.g. through research).<br /><br />While I won't swap social media for more traditional fora such academic conferences, participation in the latter is restricted for me because of the expense (travel, accommodation, registration fees) and timing. Sources like Twitter are an ongoing means of conversing with others whose interests I share, engaging in long-term exchanges that keep me thinking and that open up the discussion to anyone who can use a hashtag.<br /><br />I'm working on teaching through practice (even just with my small tutorial group this year) and through development of approaches and philosophies; and I'm thinking about pedagogy rather than "teaching", about theory and overall strategy as well as classroom tactics and practices. I'm looking for ways to examples that "stick".<br /><br />And in the context of our wired classroom, where students can use laptops and Blackberries to "tune out" from course discussions, I'm trying to understand and take into account the issues involved--"student engagement" and technology in the classroom; consumerism and credentialism; cognitive development in learning; differences in learning "styles"--and translate that back into an approach that gets students interested enough to abandon Facebook in the middle of class (high hopes, I know).<br /><br />I still see teaching and learning as being about relationships, communication, partnership, mutual responsibility, motivation, feedback, confidence, hard work, listening, and changing your approach when something doesn't work. Most important to me is to create an environment wherein questions and discussion can happen. With all that in mind I'm considering things like course design (in the abstract) and how this relates to pedagogy, particularly in terms of how different aspects of the course (curriculum/readings, assignments, tutorials and TAs, lectures) all have to work together in a way that makes sense to students.<br /><br />I think that's all for today. I hope you enjoyed the series of "Myths & Mismatches" posts, and if you're following my blog--thanks for joining me!aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-82490722120310993352011-01-17T13:33:00.000-05:002011-01-17T13:35:05.395-05:00"Myths & Mismatches" Part 10: What it takes, for what it's worthHere is the last post in my series of responses to <a href="http://jovanevery.ca/">Jo Van Every</a> and <a href="http://www.escapetheivorytower.com/">Julie Clarenbach</a>'s <a href="http://jovanevery.ca/academic-myths-and-mismatches/">e-course on "Myths & Mismatches"</a> in academic careers. I hope you've enjoyed reading these posts, and I recommend this e-course as well as other materials available on both authors' web sites.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mismatch #5: Mismatch of Skills</span><br /><br />As discussed in a <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-2-assessing-your-qualifications.html">previous post</a> in this series, we often gain more "skills" from graduate training than we think. But the "flip-side" of that fact is that those skills are also <span style="font-style: italic;">required</span> to develop successful academic career.<br /><br />"Success" at an academic job involves juggling aspects of work that require both collaboration and independent, creative work; maintaining a high level of communicative competence in both spoken and written forms and for diverse audiences; working both within and without structures and time constraints, as the context demands/requires; and having both micro- and macro-level understanding of a topic or issue or project.<br /><br />While "for some people, these skills come naturally", many of us will need to learn to balance our strengths and weaknesses to achieve the necessary results; personally I think I'll need a workaround for my introversion (I now call it being "selectively social"), for my non-linear mode of approaching things (though I'm getting much better at dealing with that), and for my chronic perfectionism about research/writing (the blog helps, I think). I worry that I'll be too "taxed" by teaching to finish any worthwhile research, that my focus couldn't be sustained while my attention has to be stretched in so many different directions. But then I also know that when I get into a scheduled "groove", I often rise to the challenge and get more work done than I would otherwise.<br /><br />The question posed by Jo and Julie is whether "making do" in this way is "sustainable" for you. Like students, academics "have wildly different skill sets" and while "there may be a way to bridge that gap [...] it may not be worth the time and effort required". In other words, if the demands of the job feel like "too much", there may only be so far you can go in terms of professionalizing yourself. In my case, I ask myself whether I can learn to hone my focus for shorter periods in order to cope with the fragmentation of diverse scheduled tasks, and whether I can clobber my perfectionism and just "let go" of my writing the way others seem to be able to do. Whether I can get around feeling a disheartening sense of personal responsibility every time a student does poorly. Will "trying harder" be enough?<br /><br />-------------------------<br /><br />Previous posts in this series:<br /><br />Part 1: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/blogging-my-responses-to-myths-and.html">"Myths and Mismatches", Oh My!</a><br />Part 2: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/mismatches-time-place-and-opportunity.html">Time, Place, and Opportunity</a><br />Part 3: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-2-assessing-your-qualifications.html">Assessing Your Qualifications</a><br />Part 4: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/structural-faults.html">Structural Faults?</a><br />Part 5: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myth-of-academic-meritocracy.html">The Myth of Academic Meritocracy</a><br />Part 6: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-mismatches-part-6-getting.html">Getting Your Priorities Straight</a><br />Part 7: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-mismatches-part-7-how-to-apply.html">How to Apply Yourself</a><br />Part 8: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-mismatches-part-8-are-you-at-home.html">Are You "at Home"?</a><br />Part 9: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-mismatches-part-9-finding-your.html">Finding Your Place</a>aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-73593471506821607772011-01-17T10:15:00.006-05:002011-01-17T13:30:05.897-05:00"Myths & Mismatches" Part 9--Finding Your PlaceToday's <span><a href="http://jovanevery.ca/academic-myths-and-mismatches/">myth</a> from</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><span><a href="http://jovanevery.ca/">Jo</a> and</span><span> <a href="http://www.escapetheivorytower.com/">Julie</a></span> is one I find quite important--perhaps because I've done quite a bit of moving around throughout my life. I'm giving this one a lot of consideration as I ponder the next steps.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Myth #5: Geography Doesn't Matter</span><br /><br />In case you hadn't heard, "academia is notable for the lack of control we have about where we end up geographically, especially in a job market with few opportunities."<br />I know that for me, place has always had importance. Sometimes there's more of a connection to the people around me (as there is in Ontario, where I've now lived for quite a while). Other places just feel "right" whether I know someone there or not (Montreal, for some reason; and New Zealand, probably because I grew up there). There are also places like England that I love to visit, but where I could never see myself living.<br /><br />In a profession where long-term positions are becoming harder to obtain, mobility becomes an asset in your job search. But this is also the reason why "it's not uncommon for people to end up in geographic locations that just don’t work for their lives and personalities."<br /><br />There's more to place than climate and topography: "let's face it -- being the only person of color or queer person around is rarely sustainable." The latter point is at least semi-relevant to me personally, and I think it applies to one's life-politics (as opposed to life-<span style="font-style: italic;">style</span>) as well. For example, I know a lot of people who have applied for work in the U.S., but I wouldn't personally feel comfortable moving there even for a temporary position. That's a personal preference, which also stems from cultural tastes and familiarities developed over a lifetime. But it's also savvy to know and understand that there's no way I would "fit in" at a college in rural Arkansas (or at least, that's not how I want to spend my time).<br /><br />Why is it, then, that <span style="font-style: italic;">where</span> you work is supposed to be irrelevant? To return to a running theme in these posts, if you're living "<a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/blogging-my-responses-to-myths-and.html">the Life of the Mind</a>" then "geography doesn't matter -- because you can take your mind anywhere." This is of course untrue at every level of post-secondary education (and elsewhere). It's also an idea underpinned by the separation of mind and body, by the ideal of the ascetic/academic, and by the assumption of a guarded boundary between the university and the "real world".<br /><br />I feel the same way about my living/working space as I do about geographic location--I'm more stressed, it's harder for me to work, when I'm living in an unpleasant environment and there are people with whom I don't get along. At the moment I'm lucky, I have a great space and I share it with only my cats; I'm an <a href="http://typelogic.com/infj.html">introvert</a> so this works out very well for me. I admit that I need quiet and physical order to get my work done, mostly because my mental state is usually pretty chaotic (or "creative" to put it nicely). The same point applies to institutional spaces, something I wrote about <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/popup/blogs/university_of_venus/places_of_learning">here</a>.<br /><br />I agree that geography, that <span style="font-style: italic;">place</span>, "matters to our happiness, it matters to our health, and it matters to our relationships" and that this affects how well we're able to do our jobs. When you make a decision you need to take into account that place contributes to your career trajectory often in unforeseen ways. Just as the wrong institution or department <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-mismatches-part-8-are-you-at-home.html">can be a "mismatch"</a> (often a career setback), so can the wrong city/town or country.<br /><br />-----------------------------<br /><br />Previous posts in this series:<br /><br />Part 1: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/blogging-my-responses-to-myths-and.html">"Myths and Mismatches", Oh My!</a><br />Part 2: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/mismatches-time-place-and-opportunity.html">Time, Place, and Opportunity</a><br />Part 3: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-2-assessing-your-qualifications.html">Assessing Your Qualifications</a><br />Part 4: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/structural-faults.html">Structural Faults?</a><br />Part 5: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myth-of-academic-meritocracy.html">The Myth of Academic Meritocracy</a><br />Part 6: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-mismatches-part-6-getting.html">Getting Your Priorities Straight</a><br />Part 7: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-mismatches-part-7-how-to-apply.html">How to Apply Yourself</a><br />Part 8: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-mismatches-part-8-are-you-at-home.html">Are You "at Home"?</a>aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-24651221766139086622011-01-15T17:19:00.019-05:002011-01-16T21:01:21.175-05:00"Myths & Mismatches" Part 8-Are You "At Home"?My series of responses continues today with one of the most crucial issues you might end up facing as a graduate student or as a professor...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mismatch #4: Mismatch of personality</span><br /><br />Every workplace, every university department or academic "unit", is more than the sum of its walls and windows, its rules and regulations. It's a <span style="font-style: italic;">place</span> that emerges partly from the interactions of the people involved, i.e. faculty, staff, students, and so on; "the basic personality of departments, not to mention universities, is a conglomeration of many factors". These include institutional orientation (e.g. research or teaching); departmental divides along theoretical, methodological or generational lines; and "the particular configurations of personalities that just don't work well together".<br /><br />You've probably noticed after spending years in university environments that you feel more at home within some of these spaces than in others--and you might have identified some of those factors that "work" for you. But it's really hard to tell what a "good fit" might be from only brief interactions with place, and with people and institutional structures. I've often felt afraid of making the wrong call on this point, since "much of this personality [...] isn't apparent at first glance". And it feels even more important when one thinks about applying for faculty positions; as a student there is always the option of switching programs or institutions, but faculty need to be able to fit in eventually with their colleagues and with the university in the long term.<br /><br />Jo and Julie argue that when a "personality" disconnect occurs, "the problem isn't you--it's just the mismatch between what you need and what they offer." You can work with compromise up to a point, but you need to recognise if and when "you just don't fit the culture of the department or institution".<br /><br />------------------------------<br /><br />Previous posts in this series:<br /><br />Part 1: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/blogging-my-responses-to-myths-and.html">"Myths and Mismatches", Oh My!</a><br />Part 2: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/mismatches-time-place-and-opportunity.html">"Mismatches": Time, Place, and Opportunity</a><br />Part 3: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-2-assessing-your-qualifications.html">Assessing Your Qualifications</a><br />Part 4: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/structural-faults.html">Structural Faults?</a><br />Part 5: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myth-of-academic-meritocracy.html">The Myth of Academic Meritocracy</a><br />Part 6: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-mismatches-part-6-getting.html">Getting Your Priorities Straight</a><br />Part 7: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-mismatches-part-7-how-to-apply.html">How to Apply Yourself</a>aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3195664823885405075.post-16004972972087390802011-01-15T11:55:00.032-05:002011-01-16T19:36:19.819-05:00"Myths & Mismatches" Part 7: How to Apply YourselfClosely tied to the idea that "<a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/blogging-my-responses-to-myths-and.html">Academia is the only game in town</a>" and that "<a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-2-assessing-your-qualifications.html">You're not qualified to do anything else</a>":<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">"Myth #4: School is the only place for smart people."</span><br /><br />Jo and Julie pose the question, "why are we telling ourselves that if we're smart, we must necessarily go for the highest degree possible?" One answer would be that this is how the system works; certainly <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html">Ken Robinson</a> makes this argument, that the entire educational apparatus is designed to perpetuate itself by allowing those most successful to ascend to the level of Professor. When or not one agrees with the rest of Robinson's theses, this point is useful because it highlights the process of replication that becomes especially important in graduate education. This can be stultifying; not only is the government agenda to push PhDs out of the university, but "if the last twenty years have taught us anything [...] it's the power of smart people outside of school".<br /><br />Not only is "school" the only place for intelligence, there's also a hierarchy of knowledge. I know when I was considering doing my PhD in Education, I was advised not to (by more than one person) essentially because the discipline wasn't respected; this seems to relate to a long tradition of Education as a research area being perceived as less valuable and prestigious than other disciplines (for some history on this, see <a href="http://books.google.ca/books?id=l8kV1sB1t6UC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22An+Elusive+Science%22&source=bl&ots=jlrxRYCQWu&sig=Eo9UvfHGI1cHdn1iVbR0BSg3zEQ&hl=en&ei=wnYzTbS1AcL-8AbxwsjPCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">"An Elusive Science"</a> by Ellen Condliffe Lagemann). I've also heard of top students being advised not to apply for their B.Ed, for the same reason--teaching as a profession isn't respected the way law, medicine and engineering are. The irony is that we <span style="font-style: italic;">need </span>teachers to be the smartest people we can find, since they're the ones preparing the future generations who'll be running this place when we're all too old to participate. Seems straightforward enough to me.<br /><br />To be considered very smart and to do something other than remaining in academe is to violate expectations; after all, academe is supposed to be the one place where <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myth-of-academic-meritocracy.html">intellectual merit is rewarded</a> most highly. But "what if we could bring our smartness to bear on whatever it is that makes us passionately, excitedly happy? For some people, yes, that will be academia. But not everyone." I think this summarises my attitude--I want to be as effective as possible at something, given my own abilities and limitations; I need to feel like I'm doing something towards whatever my goal is (though the goal itself is evolving, and has always been so over time).<br /><br />For myself, I do think it's reasonable to view a university career as a good fit if I can engage in the things that are meaningful/productive to me (such as teaching, writing a book, being around other intellectually engaged people, communicating/engaging with different "publics", and so on). I like the structure of the academic environment because in spite of its flaws, it helps motivate me and at its best it gives a kind of institutional form to practices and values I find important. And I think the university should be a place where new ideas can be tried out--where faculty also have a responsibility to voice critical viewpoints, to "engage" with larger audiences. Knowledge is political, that's one of the things that draws me to this career; and the university is an ongoing project in which all members have some role. I find the perverse balance between tradition and innovation to be at the heart of the university, and rather than destructive I think this struggle is its very reason for continued existence over thousands of years.<br /><br />But all this is about more than being "smart" or a good writer--it's about negotiating the whole package, warts and all, and that's part of what this whole series of posts has been about. You can be smart and do a hundred other worthwhile things, it's just that this isn't necessarily the message you'll get while you're at university, particularly in graduate school. If the whole package doesn't end up working out, there are other, equally meaningful forms of employment to which you can apply your considerable <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-2-assessing-your-qualifications.html">skills and training</a>.<br /><br />--------------------------------------------<br /><br />Previous posts in this series...<br /><br />Part 1: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/blogging-my-responses-to-myths-and.html">"Myths and Mismatches", Oh My!</a><br />Part 2: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/mismatches-time-place-and-opportunity.html">"Mismatches": Time, Place, and Opportunity</a><br />Part 3: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-2-assessing-your-qualifications.html">Assessing Your Qualifications</a><br />Part 4: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/structural-faults.html">Structural Faults?</a><br />Part 5: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myth-of-academic-meritocracy.html">The Myth of Academic Meritocracy</a><br />Part 6: <a href="http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/2011/01/myths-mismatches-part-6-getting.html">Getting Your Priorities Straight</a>aesthetic.vigelantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10599532539822234700noreply@blogger.com0