Burnt Out Adjunct

Moving

2008-09-12T08:31:00.001-07:00

Hi All.

I am not giving up on blogging, but I am giving up on Blogger.

I have moved the site, in its entirety to here: http://burntoutadjunct.wordpress.com/

If you with to continue with my snarkiness, see me there.

Where to teach

2008-08-29T18:53:00.001-07:00

A new reader e-mails the following:

Hello,
I ran across your blogspot in an effort to discover colleges that I might apply
to (to teach online). I JUST received my Master's in Elementary Ed. so I don't
have very many options...as far as being qualified for teaching very much. I
just wondered if you have any suggestions about where I could use my Master's
to teach online? I have applied to Phoenix and am awaiting the next phase. They
requested a whole packet of info, which I turned in...I am looking for more
places to teach at, as I NEED the money desperately! And I have three small
kids, so it's ideal for me not to have to leave home...
Anyway, you are welcome to put this question on your blog, I just didn't want to
take the time to set up a google account...so here I am.
thanks so much!
Sincerely,
~desperate for extra money :)

This is a very trick question. Where to teach online has a lot to do with factors that you will have no control over: enrollment, fluctuations and moods of out-of-sight deans, etc.

I would first begin asking, aside from the outright desperation, what sort of requirements you would be willing to fill. You sound, just by the note above, to be willing to accept just about anything. That will be fine for now, but watch out...the online faculty as pushed in ways onground are not.

For instance, you will be asked to respond, in decent length and detail, to each and every posting, question or e-mail from your students. Not too bad if you have 1-3 sections, but it can get burdensome fast, especially once weekly grading kicks in. UofP is especially stringent about you answering questions in length (think 10 lines or so) to each student posting. You are expected to share a lot of yourself, your experience and your thoughts. If you can type quickly, you will be ahead of the game, but factor in at least an hour per day in answering each section. I didn't make that cut for them.

Other schools will depend on their respective calls for Ed teachers. My experience is in Comp, so I don't know if I can recommend. I know that Capella prefers only PhDs. Baker College out of MI might be a place to look. Kaplan is another, although I don't know their Ed offerings.

Staying home and grading is a great boon, but don't underestimate the time required. I feel, especially in the accelerated sections (UofP were 5 weeks long), you will be expected to put in a large amount of "face" time online.

Hope this little bit helps.

“Google is not research.”

2008-06-17T09:46:00.000-07:00

On the surface, this seems to be a self-evident truism; a bane of all instructors looking at the paltry bibliographies of their student’s “research” papers. A topic is assigned, the student does their due diligence by “Googling” expected key words, and undoubtedly one of those key terms turns up Wikipedia. Information is found, two more sites consulted and the topic is, according to the students, covered. Laptop case closed, time to move on.

InsideHigherEd today offers a story about the Cornell Undergraduate Information Competency Initiative, which seeks an “understanding [of] how students perceive university research.” One of the expressed goals, as stated by Cornell professor Kathy Lee Berggren, is “to ‘really learn how to use a library whether they’re in it or not.’”

Cornell’s summer seminar seeks to build on the work from Berkeley who, undergoing an accreditation review, sought to understand how to incorporate research skills into the course level of instruction. That is, instead of requiring a specific research course, Berkeley, on a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, sought to set up the framework by which research skills could be woven into the instruction of any course.

What Berkeley and Cornell are both wrestling with is the complication of performing research in an iPod age. The players as I see them: “digital native” students, cranky, if well-meaning professors, Google and brick-n-mortar libraries. Oh yea, and Steve Jobs.

First, the natives. Contemporary students come to college with a different set of expectations than they did even ten years ago. These students are not agog at the level and breadth of information available to them. Rather, they expect to be able to, within a few key strokes, to gain access to whatever information they seek. And, with aggregated search engines like Yahoo! and Google, they are, to a large extent, able to accomplish this. Want to know the background of the Boston Tea Party? Want to see dissenting opinions? Conspiracy theories? The YouTube parody? Incoming freshmen can provide, usually while listening to downloaded music streaming from a video-enabled iPod (or, if you teach at ACU, all accessed on their school-provided iPhone). Research is done dude!

The cranky, if well-meaning professors, once confronted with such a bibliography, stare at the creatures seated in front of them and wonder, probably correctly, if these poor deluded punks have ever set foot in the hallowed halls of the school library. They haven’t. In their minds, they do not need to. Wake up old man, all of the information is now available online. If you want “deep” research, go to Google Scholar. There are all sorts of articles and things like that—even whole books now.

And expectations clash.

Libraries have done wonders in cataloging, compiling and generally making information accessible. I have no beef with them. They are, with a few notable exceptions, often lone wolfs, wandering the information plains with little support, scratched-together technology, and low budgets. They yearn for the students to come on in and use the catalogs so painstakingly compiled, the databases built from competing platforms. They even have an online portal offered up for dorm access. They have built it…they will come.

A user is able to access a vast catalog of downloaded/ripped songs by using only one fingers—usually the thumb. By spinning the wheel, even a novice user can quickly find the song/podcast lecture she is seeking within a few seconds, even from a list of thousands. Form meets function, and the case is cool and sleek and it works and the information becomes subordinate to the users. The thumb is in charge, and the streaming sounds confirm that, at least here, the world works, as it should. Steve Jobs has provided the user with a user experience that confirms, at least for most, the promises of the web hype—the tool from the bubble.

What the Natives don’t get, and the Profs know, is that the Net does not cast the skein that one might assume. That is, there are some big holes in that Net. The Libraries have worked to fills these gaps (consortiums, partnerships, etc.), but their work doesn’t always get the notice or exposure. Here is where the fault lines of generational expectations come into stark relief: Profs expect students to march into the library and acquaint themselves with the subject’s/discipline’s fiefdom. If not, then the student is lazy and lacks the necessary drive or will. The Natives don’t expect to have to navigate fiefdoms. For them, at least thus far, knowledge and data have been without borders. It does not occur to them that there would be a specific database for articles about Colonial literature that is not accessible through a quick key-word search from their dorm.

So, committees will form, grants will be given and studies will recommend that individual professors seek to imbue a research skill-set into their objectives. And without a standard (either a collective standard (MLA) or an organizational approach (ie Google)), the Natives and the Profs will continue to lament just how odd, lazy, out-of-touch, etc. the other is.

"The Last Professors" an interview

2008-06-11T18:01:00.000-07:00

InsideHigherEd.com has a interview with Frank Donoghue about his book "The Last Professor." While the interview sounds a rather pessimistic (realistic?) view of the future of tenor, the meat of the discussion--alluded to but not explored--is in the "the casualization of the teaching workforce"--which I would have liked way more discussion about.

What is interesting about the article is that the bulk of the comments focused on the role and nature of tenor, much, I think, to the dismissal of the larger forces at work.

I think I have more to say, but just not yet.

Interesting "facts"

2008-06-03T18:16:00.000-07:00

I got this list as an e-mail forward, so it must be all true:

-Scientists say the higher your I.Q. The more you dream.
>
>
> -The largest cell in the human body is the female egg and the smallest is
> the male sperm.
>
> -You use 200 muscles to take one step.
>
> -The average woman is 5 inches shorter than the average man.
>
> -Your big toes have two bones each while the rest have three.
>
> -A pair of human feet contains 250,000 sweat glands.
>
> -A full bladder is roughly the size of a soft ball.
>
> -The acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve razor blades.
>
> -The human brain cell can hold 5 times as much information as the
> Encyclopedia Britannica.
>
> -It takes the food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach.
>
> -The average human dream lasts 2-3 seconds.
>
> -At the moment of conception, you spent about half an hour as a single
> cell.
>
> -There is about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet.
>
> -Your body gives off enough heat in 30 minutes to bring half a gallon of
> water to a boil.
>
> -The enamel in your teeth is the hardest substance in your body.
>
> -Your teeth start growing 6 months before you are born
>
> -When you are looking at someone you love, your pupils dilate, and they do
> the same when you are looking at someone you hate.
>
> -Your thumb is the same length of your nose.
>
> At this very moment I know full well you are putting this last fact to the
> test...now remove your thumb from your nose and pass this on to the
> friends you think might be interested in comparing their thumbs to their
> noses as well! :-)

BlackBoard should "opt out"

2008-05-19T14:54:00.000-07:00

InsideHigherEd wrote about Blackboard syncing with Facebook to provide a class link (which is what ultimately worked out) through the social networking site. BlackBoard, in doing so, comes off as a the creepy old dude still trying to look cool.

One of the comments makes a link here where the phrase "creepy tree house effect" is discussed, which is pretty accurate for a neologism.

One of the comments to the creepy tree house effect discusses, quite well, how she tried twitter as an opt in class aid.

To all of this I say: keep the class out of socializing. That is, by drawing a clear demarcation between class time and social time, a whole set of confusing, embarrassing, and/or inappropriate blurring of personal/professional.

Why would BlackBoard want to interface on FaceBook? Because students don't want to log on to BB's interface? Then create an RSS feed for updates to be spammed out.

Because students spend a lot of time on Facebook and not on the BB site? Then make the BB site more usable--key interfaces with the library, with sources, may a link-in with OneNote or the like...

Point is, quit trying to be "cool" and be functional. Let the students and profs work out the time spent on task, and leave the socializing to the hallways.

Turn It In.com can pay me to go to SF

2008-05-02T14:30:00.000-07:00

InsideHigherEd has a story, with some attempt at breathless expose, outlining TII's solicitation to pay travel to San Fransisco's CCCC convention next year. Catch is, the paper should be nice to TII. The same paper has to be initially approved by the CCCC committee, but that fact appears only marginally in the story (or it may have only cropped up in the comments).

Here is what I said:

In my poverty-stricken adjunct days, I would have jumped at the chance to present at a national conference about a tool whose use I employed for the 12 odd years I taught. I would have jumped to present the limitations of the tools (which there are) in order to present the context of its use (as an automated policing tool). Why, because I was poor, the tool worked, and it freed up my time. Plus, there are little opportunities for an adjunct to play on the big stage.

Would it have been like "win a free trip to SF?" You betcha, but not just to see the Golden Gate, but, again, to play on the larger professional stage.

I second making the payment public (I would be one of those whose initial submission may or may not be what is actually presented--tickets, once purchased, cannot be taken back). CCCC needs to enter the adult world where financial interests compete with scholarship (medicine has been doing it for years). Monitor, yes. Disclose, yes. Allow for a range of voices that may not have been heard, yes.

Worst case, you walk out of a commercial posing as a paper. Best case, you hear from that small town CC whose adjunct has something interesting to say.

Online Adjunct--how much can it pay

2008-04-29T08:44:00.000-07:00

A very intrepid reader browsed through a long-lost post and posed the following question:

I have taught as an adjunct in both an online in class instructor. Obviously, I'm not rolling in the cash from it. So imagine my surprise when I talked to a guy who is the head of a major corporation in the city where I live. He talked about a 6-figure supplement he was making from teaching online. I was really suspicious, calculating that he would have to teach about 60 classes a year (in addition to a full-time job and family) to make that kind of money. I mentioned my confusion and he said that over time he has found the highest paying online universities that have "not overwhelming" time commitments and he's done it that way. Do you think it's possible?

The short answer is: he is full of Bush. That is, no way he is earning six figures adjuncting online. I went into the salary breakdown in some detail less than a year ago, and I think the numbers there still stand.

I stated that for one institution (3 classes per six week term), one could earn $30K/year. For six figures, one would need to teach at 4 schools (3.5 or something), averaging 12 classes at one time (average of 12-15 students per class) for a total of 144-168 students every six weeks.

Is this possible? Yes. But with some major caveats: composition could NOT be the subject. In fact, I would argue that no subject requiring qualitative/subjective feedback would allow for this. Perhaps a hard science, math or the like COULD allow for this (standardized, automated test; defined course pack; limited to no teacher-student feedback/interaction), but then the prof is really not teaching is she.

So, by definition, good teaching really cannot stand up to that sort of load.

If you are able, somehow, to pull this off, let us know. Scrub the names, but give us the numbers. Is online adjuncting into six figures possible?

Give us some hope.

The Few...

2008-04-23T06:20:00.000-07:00

The Family has been reeling with some, shall I say, "impacting" news of late. Lovely Wife is the older of 7. The youngest brother, without much discussion, enlisted. He left for San Diego on Monday.

The reaction with the Family has been mixed, and a little strange. I am married into the Family, so I still, even after ten years, have an outsider's sense. The immediate members, LW, her twin and the sisters were all adamantly against enlistment. "Why would you enlist when we are at war?" "What are you thinking...?" Those sorts of questions.

The brothers and uncles, though, have a more jaundiced view: "It will do him good." "He needs direction..." That sort of thing.

So, he was feted over the weekend and shipped off.

We did not go to the fete. In fact, LW cried off and on, mourning her little brother, fearful of how the experience will play out with him. We both acknowledge/understand the current deployment pressures: stop-loss, extended tours, multiple deployments. No one else in the family, though, seems to accept these as facts. "Once Bush is out of office, things will be better." "He will be in Korea, not in Iraq." "Things will be fine."

I don't think our family is unique in this sort of behavior, and I am ambivalent about his enlistment myself. Do I honor service? Yes. My freedoms come at a great cost. Do I think the service our soldiers give is well repaid to them? Not even close (VA neglect, lack of adequate equipment, the list is long and sad). Do I want my brother-in-law in the middle of the current mess? Not in the least.

I will address the "letters to the mothers" tomorrow.

Is your brain gendered?

2008-04-08T17:48:00.000-07:00

The BBC Science web site returned that I have a slightly more masculine brain.

What about you?

What Podcasting can be--Challenge

2008-04-01T11:56:00.001-07:00

A previous posting offered Duncan's The History of Rome as a podcasting "best of breed."

To this post, Dr. Lacy took me to task, offering a critique (see the comments to the link above) of the podcasts.

I say to my readers: do you know of better? Do you have a good example of a podcast worthy of sharing (or dare I say of assigning?)?

Share with us.

TurnItIn.com is legal--for now

2008-03-26T06:52:00.000-07:00

A short blurb over at InsideHigherEd cites a recent ruling against four high schoolers arguing their rights of ownership were violated when they uploaded their papers to the antiplagiarism site.

The blurb goes as follows:

A federal judge has rejected a lawsuit by four high school students who claimed that Turnitin, a popular plagiarism detection service used by many schools and colleges, violated their ownership rights to their own papers. The ruling said that the box students check consenting to having their papers reviewed (and stored) makes it impossible for the students to sue. Because the students checked the box, they gave consent, even if they also stated their objections, the decision said. Further, the ruling defended the right of educational institutions to use services like Turnitin. “Schools have a right to decide how to monitor and address plagiarism in their schools and may employ companies ... to help do so,” the decision said. An appeal is expected. The decision text and a critical analysis of it appear on the blog of Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University who has been closely watching the case.

I have used the site extensively, catching mostly ignorance over cheating (more on this later).

What Podcasting can be

2008-03-19T13:57:00.000-07:00

I have expressed a great interest in ACU (and their ilk's) foray into Web 2.0 education (see recent posts), and I have expressed some open skepticism on how they may make the relevance.

If you are interested in using technology to address educational content, you must check out The History of Rome podcast (don't click the link yet...you won't be back). Most of the entire podcast catalog can be found in iTunes, which is a nice way to collect and move to your MP3 player of choice.

I commend you, Mike Duncan. Engaging content that educates, engages and completely sucks me in!

Do you even know it is a language

2008-03-17T11:27:00.000-07:00

I was flying this morning, catching up on some back issues of Wired, when I came across this article.

It relates the wonderful story of A M Baggs as told by herself. You see, she would be diagnosed as profoundly autistic. She talks, though, with her environment in a continual, consistent manner. Catch her manifesto of self, before Oliver Sacks writes her up.

From the disturbing Compassionate Conservative front

2008-03-11T14:47:00.000-07:00

It is 10:00 p.m., do you know what your teen daughter is being infected with? Chances are 1 in 4 that she already has an STD.

The problem with religious-based domestic policy, which the founding fathers really didn't want, is that it is too often narrow minded and ineffective. By sticking to an abstinance-only policy, a whole generation of kids are not getting the knowledge they need to protect themselves.

Rather, they are getting stuff that doesn't wash off.

Another "mission accomplished."

From the Paleo-anthropology front

2008-03-10T15:52:00.000-07:00

Perhaps all Parisian articles are like this one, but I cracked up, literally laughing out load. It seems that while paleo-archeologist/anthroplogists are trying to decide where the Hobbit people of Indonesia fit into the family tree, one nutritional theory seems to be catching on. It seems that the Hobbit people may have been suffering from a lack of iodine, which would, it seems, account for the very same traits the paleo folks are trying to account for through evolution.

The best part of the story, though, comes toward the end where Richard Ingham states:

The researchers say there is anecdotal evidence from local folklore to back their claim.
The Nage people of central Flores tell tales of ancestors called "ebu gogo" who lived in caves, were short, roughly-built, hairy, pot-bellied and stupid, who stole food, could not cook and had an imperfect language.
"These characteristics are all consistent with ME cretinism," says the study

Classic.

Call for tech-sanity

2008-03-05T15:05:00.000-08:00

Here is a small rant placed on InsideHigherEd today:

Despite the seeming validity of the statement, getting an iPhone won't necessarily "seal the deal" for enrollment. One or two out of a Freshman class, maybe, but these are niche schools to begin with. If you are a Church of Christ member, depending on your degree of conservative evangelicalism, you will go to ACU (insert school of choice here) because of your desire to be around like-minded folk. ACU happens to be on the moderate end of this radical group (Pepperdine is the most liberal; Harding conservative).

That aside, educationally I applaud this move. Where Duke was a little early (audio-based), the iphone is perfectly suited for web-based integration with BlackBoard, web-apps, etc. Instead of bemoaning the move, how about exploring the possibilities offered to address (read: be seen as relevant) the digital natives. Like the dot-coms, some ideas will fail miserably. Others (whoever heard of Google 10 years ago) may very well revolutionize.

So, let's discuss how we can use technology to teach, eh?

Texas Democrats--Not a contradiction in terms

2008-03-03T10:14:00.000-08:00

Kinky Friedman aside, the last 14 years has been hard on Democrats in Texas. Since W became governor, Texas's persona has been hijacked and warped into a unilateral, idiotic parody of a drug-store cowboy. With swagger and little else (the lack of cattle, but having the hat), W has forced the Texas Blue into choosing a wasted vote or Nadar.

Now, it seems that they may very well determine the Democratic nominee. So, to all my Texas friends, I say time to escape your bonds, cast your votes, and welcome back from exile.

What a student sees: OR learning today

2008-02-28T15:20:00.000-08:00

I find the embedded video interesting more for the approach than the content. This, like mentioned in the last post, uses a classroom assignment to design digital content that is the published to the larger audience.

Given the reality-TV generation's desire to share themselves, I find these sorts of assignments much better aligned with future job requirements.

I mean, really, when is the last time your job called for a 10 page essay on the fashion of 18th century theater? A presentation about some arcane technical initiative? Yes.

teaching on the cutting edge

2008-02-28T06:41:00.000-08:00

I noted in my last post that ACU is going to give away an iPhone to incoming freshmen. InsideHigherEd.com has an article about Duke's foray into giving away iPods. What follows is the bulleted conclusions from Duke along with my professional, Instructional Designer opinion.

More than 600 students were in courses using the iPods each semester of the academic year that just concluded. A decent pool of students, but back in 2005 I don't think that the iPod had video capacity. This means that the school was relying solely on audio content. One sensory approach will have limited appeal/success.
Use was greatest among foreign language and music courses, although a range of disciplines used the devices. These courses will have the most accessible audio content (remember those language labs with the cassette players?)--and of course music. I can see a real boon for both of these areas.
While audio playback was the initial focus of most of those involved, students and faculty reported the greatest interest in digital recording. I don't really know what this bullet point is trying to say...Did the experiment result in more illegal downloads (hey, I have the hardware, let's get Kazaa!) or did they want to move to the newer iPods with the video screen (music videos!). Again, content, or the lack of, would be the killer (see below).
The effort was hurt by a lack of systems for bulk purchases of mp3 audio content for academic use. iTunes debuted in January, 2001. In that four years, music had begun porting, but podcasting, especially academic podcasting, was of limited appeal. It was like downloading a sermon--lots of audio of some guy talking about something or the other. Not really dynamic.
There are many “inherent limitations” in the iPod, such as the lack of instructor tools for combining text and audio. Here is the real heart of the experiment--and I think this point is mistaken. It was not so much that there was limited tools, but a profound lack of understanding or insight in how to use the tools that were available. Or, more to the point, how to envision digital instruction (see more below).
Some recordings made with the iPod were not of high enough quality for academic use. Speaking into a computer mike is the audio equivalent of using a webcam for broadcasting video. It is overreaching the mediums capacity.
The project resulted in increased collaboration among faculty members and technology officials at the university, and the publicity about the project led to more collaborations with other institutions. Don't overlook this benefit. Anything, and I mean anything, that gets faculty talking to the gear-heads is a good thing. Anything that encourages faculty to question how to present material is a good thing. I think this point would have made the whole experiment worth the cost--and to ACU, here is where you need to focus your attention.

If you are thinking about moving to the present-future, keep some of this in mind. Your students will know how to use/envision the hardware much better than you. Ask them what they might like to see (RSS feeds on assignments?; meeting notices for study groups?; better integration into a digital platform like BlackBoard?--I got more).

The kernal of the problem lies in content. The old-line book, pencil and lecture will not be enhanced by an iPhone, and if that is all the instructors will do, then they are wasting their mission money.

If, though, ACU continues along the line they are, then I feel that this experiment will produce measurable results.

For example, perhaps in anticipation to the general announcement, ACU has positioned their website to accommodate lurkers (like myself). Clicking the visitor option, you are taken to ACU's presence in iTunes.

The content available, which I am sure to grow, includes both audio and video options. For example, the theater department includes a fairly good "Staging Shakespeare" which, while a static slideshow montage moving behind a sit-down interview, the quality and content is, on the whole, interesting. And, it looks as if it could be created with standard Apple applications.

A similar selection can be found in Kyle Dickson's Brit Lit course. His approach, which I think is both smart and appropriate, is to encourage the students of a given section to create the content--group projects that are digitally updated. Again, taking spoken audio the student presentations provide voice-over for slides (images I am sure are not in violation of copyright). The engagement factor, though, comes from how the students are encouraged to approach the material. One example had a discussion of 18th century fashion presented by two, modern fashionistas (think red carpet commentary). Upbeat, engaging, it was a strong student production. It was also, even for this watcher, engaging.

More to come.

My Alma Mater, on the Cutting Edge?

2008-02-26T22:12:00.000-08:00

I am not sure if the Rapture is immenent, but my close-minded, Damn-you-all-to-Hell Alma Mater is actually showing some progressive signs.

I am shocked, I tell you, shocked to read this blog posting touting the incoming class's snag of significant technological swag.

When I was a Freshman, all I got was community service for sneaking a girl into the all-boys dorm...to watch a movie. A girl I didn't have any designs on even.

But, so much was expected of me and my kind, so they needed to be harsh.

Back on the Chain Gang

2008-02-26T15:29:00.000-08:00

I am beginning to settle back into a kind of routine. In case you missed, here is a three-month review:

Applied to local university for an Instructional Design position--which I am radically qualified for (I have working knowledge of the tools, experience with designing instructional material for adult learners--its been my friggin job for ten years--and experience as an online instructor--my future audience).
Didn't make the first cut
Took a project that had me traveling to a new town each week--gets old fast
local university calls back and indicates the three candidates they brought in all failed to impress--would I apply again
I apply again
Take a net-based, webinar one week gig. Worked fine.
Again did not make the phone interview cut
Drove the family cross the plains to teach for a week
Family got really sick--awful flu season, this one
Interviewed with and was offered a job the next day
Now working full time--project-based instructional design and delivery
No higher education work at all

Shakespeare and love

2008-02-20T16:20:00.000-08:00

While I came across the post a little late, Matz does a fine job showing how the Bard is (mis)used both in academia and commercially.

If you are a fan, the article is well worth your time.

Ovulate and get what you want

2008-02-05T19:40:00.000-08:00

Lovely Wife and I were just discussing our own observations of this around the house. It seems that we act, that's right, "we" act differently upon ovulation. I am, apparently, more caressing, but with some slight aggression. She is downright more aggressive.

Appears there is scientific studies to point out that interactions of all stripes are affected by the hormonal surge. Psychology Today (pulled from online, so I don't know when it was "published") notes a study linking ovulation to higher per/hour wages by exotic dancers. Appears that those on the pill averaged a much lower per hour rate.

So, track your days, and then ask for what you really want but haven't been able to get.

Response to TA T-and-A

2008-02-05T11:22:00.001-08:00

The following comes from one of the responses to the grad-stripper column from Salon.com.
I felt it directly related to the theme of this blog, so I copy it completely from here:

Good luck

One of the things they don't tell you when you enter a PhD program is that you better have family money either from parents or a spouse or don't even think about starting. As this poor woman points out most grad students only get funded for a couple of years of what for most is at least, at least, a 5-6 year endeavor. And for that matter "funding" usually means enough money to share an apartment. In my experience at a fairly prestigious humanities department, the most successful students were not necessarily the brightest but the ones who had spouses to support them. As competitive as the academic market is, one pretty much has to have not only a dissertation, but a publication record when you apply for jobs. Many, like me, had to work full-time just to support ourselves, which leaves little time for what is in essence another full-time job.

Unfortunately I have no solution to offer for this young woman's dilemmma. But God love 'er for finding a way out of the grad student vicious circle, at least for a while.

-- Cossackathon

Nude PhDs: TA T-and-A

2008-02-05T09:54:00.000-08:00

As a daily reader of Salon.com, I seldom have a chance to link my blog to my reading. Today that changed.

The local advice column, "Since you Asked," often has the regular, ho-hum advice seekers. But there is something about a grad student stripper asking for advice that caught my attention.

Her problem, as a liberal arts major, is paying for the last bit of work without school help. She admits to being a TA in the past, which only brings more possible links between her two worlds.

Read the letters, which are supportive and full of good advice (go farther away for a couple of weeks, bank the cash, and then crank out the diss.).

I think there are some interesting issues to tease out here: future positions ruined through a Google search, random posting of phone pics into Facebook, freedom of expression/speech.

I am afraid that in reference to hiring, there is not much liberal in the liberal arts.

Anyone got a light?

2008-01-17T14:39:00.001-08:00

(From the Lighter Side of Theology)
CHANGING A LIGHT BULB THE CHRISTIAN WAY

How many Christians does it take to change a light bulb?

Charismatic: Only 1
Hands are already in the air.

Pentecostal: 10
One to change the bulb, and nine to pray against the spirit of darkness.

Presbyterians: None
Lights will go on and off at predestined times.

Roman Catholic: None
Candles only.

Baptists: At least 15.
One to change the light bulb, and three committees to approve the change and decide who brings the potato salad and fried chicken.

Episcopalians: 3
One to call the electrician, one to mix the drinks and one to talk about how much better the old one was.

Mormons: 5
One man to change the bulb, and four wives to tell him how to do it.

Unitarians:
We choose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the need for a light bulb. However, if in your own journey you have found that light bulbs work for you, you are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your light bulb for the next Sunday service, in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, 3-way, long-life and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.

Methodists: Undetermined
Whether your light is bright, dull, or completely out, you are loved. You can be a light bulb, turnip bulb, or tulip bulb. Bring a bulb of your choice to the Sunday lighting service and a covered dish to pass.

Nazarene: 6
One woman to replace the bulb while five men review church lighting policy.

Lutherans: None
Lutherans don't believe in change.

Amish:
What's a light bulb

2008-01-10T20:37:00.000-08:00

The following was posted to InsideHigherEd in response to a book review about Academic Labor:

I married the oldest of a large extended family. Thus, over the last ten years, I have been witness to lots of discussions about college. At no point did the qualifications of the professors come into it. I will say it again...they didn't care if the prof was tenured or not.

They cared about: class size (only because they were afraid of their own note-taking abilities or they were afraid of "getting lost" in the mix); "hardness" of material; cost; brand association upon graduation.

Administration is customer facing--they know these concerns. They also pay the bills and balance the sheets. Since adjuncts help pay bills with no customer recoil, they will continue to be used, ever more and more.

Will students notice, care, act? Only later, when they are, themselves, beholden to the brand. It is a vicious cycle, not really mentioned, with a new crop of eager, anxious and oblivious "clients" each September.

Read the review. It gives a good history (if slightly abridged) of the notorious 1989 report about all of those retiring Liberal Arts profs.

Higher Ed pay

2008-01-07T12:03:00.000-08:00

The Dem debate sparked a TTD (tempest in a teacup dabate) over at InsideHigherEd.com when Chaz Gibson claimed an average of $200k annual for professors.

What is interesting about the debate (the IHE, not the Dem's) is that the comments range from pissed off adjuncts to FT profs all parsing out if they are "cush" or not.

My take, and I have been slow to realize this, is that higher ed is a choice (mission field if you would) that few should choose. Those who do, accept the negative consequences. Those who would wish to but can't afford it...realize that higher ed has always been a sport of the rich. There is no Right to Educate.

F@*& Off 2007!!!

2007-12-31T19:26:00.000-08:00

I have very little good to say about the last year. It started with sheer and utter joy (we were pregnant) to then suddenly go horribly awry.

A few things I have learned over the last year:

Few (at least if your friend group is made up of liberal-leaning folk) consider 7-8 weeks long enough to warrant full-frontal grief over the loss of a child. Hell, most don't even consider it a child, so why all of the fuss. This can make one's honest expression of pain even more isolating
Hospitals are geared toward control. The doctors have all the control (or, by extension, the administration). Why no cell phones? It is not that cell phones would interfere (they don't in planes either), but that a central switch-board allows for centralized control. Don't believe, try to find out, from a distant town, how your loved one is doing. Or, better still, find out how or who messed up the treatment.
Doctors are not sued enough. I don't care what you say about tort reform, the act of suing over malpractice keeps us all safer. I don't let the mechanic off the hook if my brakes suddenly don't work. And, one would think in a world where Wal-Mart can alter their first-in-the-door display in reaction to real-time buying patters (true), why can't medical professionals all be on the same page with medications?
Sometimes when one travels for a living, that the travel has to stop for the living. There is a finite and doing so.
Air travel does not have to be an painful as it is. Centralized control is needed. Reagan was wrong.
Sick, old ladies often outlive everyone's fear of them dying. Then, one day, they pass on. I had two this year.
One's grandparents should not die before they have met their great-grandkids. Being a grand-parent establishes a completely different dynamic than a parent, and this needs to be shared with ones own children.
Creditors have begun using multiple numbers to circumvent caller-id. It is best to judiciously use voice-mail when behind one bills
Institutions of higher learning are not "lean" enough to meaningfully respond to current societal needs. Perhaps they will form a committee to investigate this further. It will meet monthly, for an hour, over lunch.
LinkedIn is a social network group that offers little to no honest appraisals of its constituents--much like high school.
Small-town educational opportunities for ones kids continually disappoints.
It is still not in my interest (although I still have interest) in finishing my dissertation. I don't know how to reconcile that.
A white Christmas is more enjoyable than a non-white one. The snow adds to the overall charm.
Children are worth every spare moment.
I am still looking for the end to this Third Great Awakening. I am hoping that the religious climate goes back to sleep. We could use the break.
I am still not excited about the role of America on the world stage. The next ring-leader (read any way you wish) doesn't look to offer any great hope on this.
One needs, when one lives in a small town, to travel to a big city at least twice a year. Otherwise, the choice to live where one does becomes more of a sentence than a decision.
We haven't figured out how to start a school without a boatload of capital.
A year does not lighten the pain of losing a tubal child.
My state encourages malpractice by capping damages. It forces only the small number of "glory" cases to be sought (infertility, losing a limb, etc) to the fore. Others, serious but less "showy" are, for a lot of lawyers, not worth the effort--low return on effort, hard to convince a jury, conservative peers, etc...
A prophet (or a very educated person) finds no honor in her hometown.

So, to 2007, I burn you in effigy. I wish that you come to an end and that a new beginning may actually take place. Begone from me. I have no use for you. You have brought little joy.

What the Ivies have to offer

2007-12-19T14:07:00.000-08:00

To a recent post about Yale offering some courses (6 in total I think) for online access, a long-time reader notes:

MIT has something similar as well, which I've used heavily when enrolled in courses with poor instructional design.

Occasionally, some students for the Big U wander over to DU and I've been less than impressed. They really do think that their Big U matriculation status does actually make them better. Maybe they are since they can take their Big U diploma and get better jobs right out of school than I could with my DU one.

Miranda, I had heard about MITs as well (although the bulk do not include the lecture notes, where the real meat of a course lies). That just goes to my initial conclusion that the content is not nearly so important to the institution as the brand name.

A caveat on that, though. While my experience with both land-grant U and Snooty-U are limited (really just one of each), I did notice a qualitative difference in the approach to a subject at Snooty-U. It seems that Snooty-U takes an ever-increasing macro view of the subject, wanting to categorize, label, and affix the subject. For example, adhering to a type of interpretive approach seems to be much more desired from Snooty-U (perhaps they are seen as the vanguard or definers of the approach) than from LGU. And that may not be a bad thing. I have learned a great deal by reading both the SU and LGU thoughts on a given subject, along with whatever snarky iconoclasts I can find along the way.

So, take whatever content you may find.

PhD Attrition

2007-12-19T13:20:00.000-08:00

Harvard (full article) has instituted a policy that for every 5 PhD wannabes, the incoming graduate class will lose one slot. So, if there are a lot of ABDs clogging the system, the whole thing grinds to a halt.

Of course, the comment section has laments about "mercy" PhDs and the like, but on the whole I would think that my old department would have benefited greatly from this. Once I finished my coursework and took my distribution reading exams, I was left to my own devices. And, here I sit, 10 years ABD with a wife and child, mortgage and lots of student loans.

Just in case you are still pursuing an English degree

2007-12-19T13:16:00.000-08:00

You might want a good fall-back.

For 2007-8, positions in English are expected to be down 4.1 percent (full article here)

But, the article goes on to say, it isn't as bad as the mid-90's... whew, anything but the mid-90's.

They do not, though, take into account that not all "positions" are created equal:

A key issue for both sectors is that many of the jobs being listed (and likely a larger share of those that are not advertised) are off the tenure track. Continuing a trend of recent years, the percentage of full-time, tenure-track assistant professor jobs (those most sought by new Ph.D.’s for whom the MLA meeting next week is a crucial part of the quest for employment) was 63.6 percent in English and 54.1 percent in languages.

Continuing a trend...indeed.

Take a computer class or five. You will need it.

Going to Ivy

2007-12-14T11:28:00.000-08:00

Ever want to go to an Ivy school. Check out Yale's online courses. You can listen to or watch without having to sit next to someone who, you fear, knows way more than you do.

I am intrigued that the higher brands no longer feel the need to horde their content. It is an overt admission that it is the seal on the transcript that will mean the difference, not what was said or heard.

Viva la brand.

Why trampolines are dangerous

2007-12-10T10:51:00.000-08:00

I had thought that bucks were solitary, and that the does were the ones to move in packs. I count only one doe here, unless he is a button-buck.

Interesting.

Tzarina on the playground

2007-11-25T19:28:00.001-08:00

Since leaving the road (my last project was brutal in the travel), I have been able to spend a lot more time at Pookie's school. I take her in, take her lunch and then pick her up. At lunch, I sit with her and discuss her morning, talk with the other kids or generally stay out of the way if she is otherwise engaged.

I then wander outside for the recess. One of the reasons we left the catholic school was because Pookie suffered a concussion on the playground and no adult knew about it. We only found out when she began vomiting after getting picked up after school (it happened during afternoon recess). We found it deplorable that no adult either saw the incident, saw Pookie crying behind a tree, or otherwise followed-up. When we called, the principal (herafter known as Czarina) was asked, she confused Pookie with a girl who had scraped her knee. She then argued that Pookie wasn't really sick suggesting we bring in proof of injuries. Czarina had some issues.

So, playground duty is important to us. At New School (hereafter called Evangeli-U), a Lutherine evangelical school with way too many happy Jesus zealots, the playground arrangement isn't much better: one parent on duty. With at least three grades at a time, there are a lot of kids to watch for only one person. We are concerned.

I provide that background in order to tell the story of Fascist Mom. FM brooked no fun at recess. It was drizzly that day, so no climbing on the monkey-bars. Swings had to go in a straight line only, no tackling by the boys, and perhaps the merry-go-round was too much as well. She spent the whole time literally running from one end to the other running down playing kids to warn them of impending doom.

Then, we we lined up to go in (a bell I thought would never ring), she proceeded to ask if an assembly was necessary in order to go over the rules. Shocked, the kids stayed mum. Because of one spitter, the rest were warned of the low-class, evil nature of spitting out of doors. Also, there would be no tackling (even though I thought that the offending tackle was well done, with slow speed on wood chips), no wet-monkey-bar climbing and no off-line swinging. And then she said: "and there should be no screaming."

Seems that she felt that screaming (the kind a kid does when being chased, feels happy or otherwise does once outdoors) should be reserved for those times a bad person was around. Otherwise, adults might not know when there is danger. Also, if one is to scream, then one should do it in a low voice, so that it stands out from the playful screams (which they weren't supposed to do either).

I have only seen her on the playground once. It was once too many.

Are you a teacher or an Educator

2007-11-13T11:10:00.000-08:00

[copied from an e-mail forward]

According to a news report, a certain school was recently faced with a unique problem.

A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the washroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints. Every night, the maintenance man would remove them and the next day the girls would put them back. Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. He called all the girls to the washroom and met them there with the maintenance man.

He explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night. To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, he asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required.

He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.

Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

There are teachers, and then there are Educators

The state of writing today

2007-11-07T09:47:00.000-08:00

I was doing my daily reading, which I haven't been able to do for months, and this article about teen girl's and writing sucked me in. Pookie is only 5 odd years away from teendom, and I am already starting to worry.

With story after hand-wringing story about the decline of literacy due to short attention spans, texting, et al, it is refreshing to note that the "kids" are doing pretty well by themselves. Doing pretty damn fine, really.

Perhaps the text-laden, word-saturated world they live in now (you are, yourself, reading a blog) actually increases a sense of rhetorical power...makes it tacit, like grammar. Perhaps those time-wasting movies (Saw IV, anyone?) provides a sense of pacing, story-telling and framing for effect.

Infants learn to speak by listening. Perhaps, to a greater degree than has been acknowledged, teens learn to write by "reading" their world.

Share the karma...

2007-11-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

Where have you been?

2007-11-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

A recent comment asked:

Dude,

You are burnt out! No posts for 28 days? Where are you? What's happened? Where is your life going?

Actually, my last "post" was Tuesday, October 02, 2007. But the point is well taken. Where the hell am I?

I have only just returned, in time for trick-or-treating with a wicca-Pookie, from a grueling training road-trip. Here are the sites in successive weeks: Atlanta; San Diego (just a few weeks before the fires); Laurel, MD; Manassas, VA; Burlington, NJ. ...and, boy, are my arms tired.

Leading adult training five days a week for five weeks can really suck ones soul dry. Especially fi the material was created by someone else who had no idea of adult instructional design.

But, those days are done. No more being home only a day and a half on the weekends. No more late Sunday trips out to foreign lands and late Friday nights driving home. And, I had only one direct flight. Heard the horror stories of air travel lately? They are all TRUE!

I expect to get back into snarky form quickly. Welcome back everyone.

2007-10-02T20:38:00.000-07:00

A reader recently wondered if I was still in the classroom (virtual or not). As I was pondering whether I should respond or not, I read Dean Dad's polemic on why CC's should hire PhD's.

His basic argument is that PhD's are better equipped at providing the example education for their students, it helps calm the 'rents, and "on a pragmatic level, someone who already has a doctorate won't spend the next several years working on it."

Not one of DD's better posts. While it may be true, his reasoning certainly doesn't make it right, nor does it make for the best arguments for his position. After all, saying that we should continue the "surge" because it is working to reduce sectarian attacks doesn't mean that the initial invasion was right.

Of course, invasion of the ABD's is not the same as Iraq, but the logic is the same.

What about a different criteria. I mean, one finds what one is looking for.

Instead of brand appeal (encouraging the 'rents), what about ranking success in other metrics? What about the ability to inspire critical thought? What about the ability to lead by an example other than following an established path (research into a degree is a well-staked path)?

Of course, I have talked about these sort of metrics before....just search for "metrics" and "teaching."

Where am I?

2007-09-28T22:36:00.000-07:00

I have been on a bit of a search for myself lately. That is, I don't know, at times, where I am.

Currently, I am physically located in an airport bar waiting another two hours for a flight to MN and then to an airport an hour from my home. I should get in at 10:00 tomorrow morning, flying from the West Coast back to middle America. In the past two weeks I have gone coast to coast, From Atlanta to San Diego to this stop on the way home. San Francisco. A pretty city they say. I wouldn't know. I am stuck at the airport for the past four hours, with another two to go. Then I get to fly through the night.

I am a bit bitchy about this because, as I said, I don't know where I am.

I am no longer teaching online courses. I haven't since March this year. And, truth be told, I don't really miss it. I miss the teaching, but I don't miss the hassle of logging in and providing a "presence" in the class. It becomes, when viewed this way, a big hoop to jump through each day. A real drag, which doesn't help the teaching excitement one bit.

But, teaching doesn't pay the bills. Not even close. Not even close to the student loans and credit dept incurred on the foolish notion that staying in school would pay off in the end.

Why cross-country commuting? The "career" that I have imposed upon me has been to create/deliver ERP training. I like to think of it as instructional design, but it too often ends up basic computer skills training. "Yes, you click the 'save' icon to move to the next screen."

So, as a training consultant/instructional designer, I make a decent billing rate (around three figures/hour), but, I have to be on the road to make the rate.

I am here, wondering how I got here. I have to make the choice, and I know I am not alone in this, between nurturing and enjoying relationships with my family and bankruptcy. That is, if I don't leave for work (no work at home), then therein lies quick and sure financial ruin. If I go, then my Pookie sees me only on the weekend. Then she says things like "I wish my Dad didn't have to miss everything" or "why can't Dad take me to school?"

Where am I?

"Contingent Faculty" by any other name...

2007-09-13T10:02:00.000-07:00

I was replying to Amy Wink's paean to being poor and righteous, when a comment below reminded me of the term "contingent faculty." I think this term ranks right below Adjunct in its usefulness and utter lack of description.

I am all for missionaries. Teaching is mostly a mission field. I knew this going in. I just didn't know the extent of the costs, nor did I realize the entrenched class system of tenured and not: might as well be Brahmans and untouchables.

"Oh, you are a contingent faculty. You can get me nowhere. I don't need to talk to you. Good luck with this."

Follow the link above. Post a comment. Spread the love.

WIKIs in the classroom

2007-09-06T09:17:00.000-07:00

I am ambivalent about the use of WIKIs in general. Don't get me wrong, I think that they are useful (see my query about a Grace Slick song here), but to be used in the classroom seems to be an exercise in busywork.

WIKIs work by employing those with knowledge and time. It also appeals to a certain strata (who I am glad are around, but I am just not one).

Now, if I force my Freshmen to go to a WIKI to compile a set of collective knowledge about something, I will get some interesting results, but I wonder about the utility. Will a classroom be a large enough pool to gather "expertise"?--without which the whole endeavor, from the student's point of view and my own, seems to be only mildy interesting.

Would I create a grammar WIKI? God no! Horrible, horrible idea. A style WIKI? One shade up from the pit of Hell...

I see no real use.

BUT, if you do know of a use, please let the fellow below know. He works for WetPaint, a free WIKI hosting service, and he is interested.
--------------------------------
My name is Michael Bolognino and I'm writing to you from Wetpaint Central in Seattle.

I'm working on building out a dedicated area at Wetpaint.com to help guide educators through the benefits of creating wikis in the classroom, and I'd love to get your input.

If you are an educator, please take 3 minutes to answer a few questions about using wikis in Education. If you are not an educator, please disregard this email.

Cheers, Michael

Michael Bolognino
Community Manager
Michael@wetpaint.com

http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=U27EQP2L56BC

Dick Cheney '94: Invading Baghdad Would Create Quagmire

2007-08-13T09:14:00.001-07:00

One should know that one's words will always come back to himself.

Distressing note leads to diatribe

2007-08-07T20:04:00.000-07:00

A loyal reader wrote a note that was for me most distressing. I present a culled, anonymized version:

… I also work as an "instructional designer." It is kind of bogus work, though, mostly doing grunt work for existing professor to build online classes, further depleting the need for actual living, breathing, teachers. Most of these teachers are building classes outside of their core competency, which is easy, they just read the textbook manufacturer's provided power points into a camera and no student interrupts to actually find out if they really know what they are talking about. I transcribe said powerpoints into HTML and it pays as much as I probably deserve as an entry-level assistant professor. But 40-hours a week without vacation.

I recently took this job when I relocated to [southern state]. The colleges and Universities down here pay $550 per credit hour, so as the fall semester winds around I may be forced to turn this down, or to "moonlight" as an adjunct instructor just one or two classes. How much teaching do you do vs. "consulting?" My ID job is full time, so I don't know if they would let me go down to part time or "consulting," but that might make giving my time away for free in the profession I really wish to pursue, manageable.

I find many parts of this note distressing, in order:

The writer is not employed as an Instructional Designer (I mean no disrespect, we work where we can), but rather an instructional destructor. No good can come from reading PPTs, whether in person or {shudder} on video
If a professor is moving his materials online, he should only do so when he himself knows enough to perform the necessary tasks. If he outsources these skills, his students will know. They will pity and loath said professor. More educational destruction will ensue
The writer does not deserve (as s/he seems to indicate) to put up with a job like this. Even entry-level asst. profs should be able to design and craft the material – true instructional design – rather than convert the bloviating of others.
My advice is to look for night classes to adjunct. I have found that these students are more motivated (your job easier) and willing to put forth effort (your job easier). Community Colleges are a great place to adjunct. Really. If you are doing for the love of teaching, ignore the cattle-call university courses and go CC. Just keep your day job. One has to, like in any mission field, eat.
I wish the writer luck.

Movin' on up...or something like it.

2007-08-06T15:02:00.001-07:00

I noticed a stray link the other day, and look where I found myself...on the American Federation of Teachers blog called FACE. Well, here is equal time. :)

Online Adjuncting: student communication

2007-08-06T12:21:00.000-07:00

A quick Google search on online communication (here is one example) will point out that when you go online, you will likely lose all social restraint. That is, online people are more willing to say more and say it more bluntly than in person. Perhaps the fear of getting smacked in the nose keeps up inline offline.

So, without the formality of the classroom, along with its inherent social rules, be prepared for a wider spectrum of discourse from your students. You might experience this to some degree with your on-ground students, but not to the online degree.

How will your online students approach you? The spectrum is wide. Some will defer just as in face-to-face, treating you with respect and grace. They are few. Treasure them.

The bulk will adopt the level of formality you present to them. Be keenly aware of this. If you wish to be relatively informal (my preferred approach), then expect that level to be the highest to which they will aspire. That is, your tone sets the upper limits. They will only go lower.

If you give out your IM name (AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, etc) you can expect a ping anytime you are one. If you wish to separate your work and personal time, do not give this out.

Also, I would recommend giving your students "office hour"-like times when you will be checking into the class (for forum questions) and e-mail. This will help level-set expectations for communication. Your students will appreciate this, only if you stick to it. Especially around assignment deadlines (which online come fast and furious). If you are not reachable, they will reach out to someone, often the online admin. This becomes a real pain really fast (more on online admin coming). Save everyone some grief and post some available times.

I would not recommend giving out your phone number. Online students work all hours. Although they will probably be apologetic, they will still call at all hours. You will not be paid enough for this level of intrusion. Also, given the relative anonymity of online communication, phone tone will be lower than you will want. I even talked to a student's husband (told him I couldn't talk to him). He called three times. Again, I was not paid enough for that kind of hassle. E-mail works well enough.

Online Adjuncting: the numbers

2007-08-02T09:29:00.000-07:00

For those considering, or already involved in, online adjuncting. consider these numbers:

$1250--amount paid (I worked up to this number) for a six week session
47 -- estimated number of days worked in a six week session (6 weeks x 7 days + 5 days pre and post class sessions for setup and grading--estimated low for grading)
$26.60 -- per hour rate if you worked one hour per day
$13.30 -- per hour rate if you worked two hours per day (more likely average)

Factors that affect these numbers:

Add 8 hours if teaching a new class
Add 8 hours if creating new quizzes for a class
Add 8 total hours if teaching a writing intensive class (like composition)
Subtract a half-hour per day if you type really, really fast and have a high-speed connecting. If not, add another hour per day.

Things that suck up your time:

Different schools have differing rules on instructor participation. For the six week school used above, they required at least 6 days logging in. What they also demand, but do not say, is that you not only log in, but that you directly interact with virtually forum posting. This sorts out to about 30--45 minutes on a good day per class.
Grading (see quizzes to cut the time) will take a large amount of time, especially if you are in a writing intensive course. I cut my essay grading time down using the GradeEaze program. I was able to save my most commonly used comments and just click them in. I still, though, had to check TurnItIn.com for plagiarism (I recommend using this site), and down and upload the submission.
Offline prep. I tended to edit my materials every half year. I didn't, though, have control over the book(s) used, and when they changed (it was my responsibility to check the book list each six weeks to ensure I was using the right edition), I had update time to factor in.
e-mails: students will e-mail you about anything. Then, they expect an immediate response, especially right before a deadline. I do not recommend giving them a phone number...perhaps an IM name, but no phone numbers.
Number of students in class--the "max" at the school used in this scenario was 12--15.
Number of sections/courses taught. If you are teaching three sections of the same course, then the time spent in each can be streamlined. Trouble begins when you are teaching 2-3 different courses. More trouble if those courses are spread across multiple schools (my record was 10 courses at three schools at the same time).

Other numbers:

6+ average years in acquiring a liberal arts PhD.
3 -- number of years to acquire a law degree
$35-$42K -- starting salary for liberal arts instructors
$0--$45K -- starting salary for law grads
$50K -- average salary for liberals arts grad five to ten years into
$80-$120K -- average salary for law grade five to ten years into

Still more numbers:

$10K -- annual salary at one course per 6 week semester
$30K -- annual salary achievable at this school (max of three courses per semester)
$4326 -- annual cost of health insurance for a family of three
$20K -- net pay
$15674 -- net after health insurance

Final numbers:

24 -- number of courses to make $30K
288 -- number of students taught to make $30K
1440 -- number of essays (five per 6 weeks) per year for $30K

Family (dys)function

2007-08-01T11:48:00.000-07:00

The family and I (Lovely Wife and Pookie) spent the better part of last week broiling in the North Texas sun. It seems that I had a family (dys)function to attend.

One thing about being from Texas (West Texas in particular) is the overbearing, heavy-handed sense of being the center of the world. I don't know a lot of other states that take such pride in their own sense of brand location.

Anyhoo (the Texasisms have come creeping back into my language of late), my kid sister married (a pilot from Mississippi) a guy the family met at the rehearsal lunch. That was nice and awkward. He seemed relatively harmless and smitten, so I am in wait and see mode.

I endured a lot of "How's the weather treatin' ya" jibes (I moved up North--Yankee land-- in 1993 and haven't gone back) and the occasional, "How can you bear that much cold..."? The questions are honest and sincere, which makes their provinciality, somehow, all the more painful.

On the last day, Pookie realized that she had promised Special Boy a gift from Texas. He is five to her six. This happened to be in a CVS, so we went to the toy section. She picked up a Buzz Lightyear doll, and she wondered if he would like it. I said that I am sure that he would, but that we should maybe pick out something a little more Texas-sy... She looked and thought and then observed, "we could get him a gun. That is Texas-sy."

I could not argue.

We got a stuffed horse instead, though.

Jim Gray

2007-07-23T13:46:00.000-07:00

Lovely Wife sometimes "knows" things. I don't pretend to understand how or why, but more times than not she is right.

Wired magazine's current edition has an article chronicling the search for the missing Jim Gray.

Her take: he is alive but mentally unwell. He will be found on some island or coast looking homeless and lost.

We shall see.

Online Adjuncting: quizzes

2007-07-23T12:45:00.000-07:00

There are numerous reasons to create a quiz:

One small attempt to ensure reading
A chance to get a grade in the system
Automated grading
Easy upload

The first reason is pretty obvious: even more than on-ground, you can’t tell if the student has read…or even if the one logging in is the real student (it happens). But, with a handy-dandy reading quiz, you can at least ensure the student reads the material in the quiz… And that is something.

I taught mainly writing courses, so it was nice to get a grade into the system that was relatively high (reading quizzes are not meant to trip the student up, but to ensure reading) and graded by someone other than myself. Online quizzes do both. And they are easy, once made, to upload.

With that, how does one make an online quiz? Glad you asked. I used both BlackBoard and WebCT before they merged, and both handled quizzes much the same. You “code” the quiz, upload and link and set a date to run.

How to code a quiz:

Start with a list of questions (why write your own)…most books have a companion website or CD where they provide lists of questions. Copy/paste into a wordpad document. You will then choose the questions you want to include (I picked a decent number—around 25, unless they really didn’t read and then I picked 50)
Chose your questions, deleting the rest
You have pasted into a WordPad document because you want to eliminate all styles and formatting, and Word will try to retain these. Kill them all.
Format your questions. Automatic upload programs work by finding key words and tabs (similar to uploading into a database or Excel—which it really is). To define the type of question, enter the question type: MC, TF, etc…
Use tabs to separate question type from question from answers from answer types:

Question type Question? answer 1 answer type (is this the correct answer or not)

A formatted question looks:

TF A teleconference is appropriate for a group of people at the same location. False

MC The paperless office prediction was based on the belief that: real paper would be substituted with a more economic “fake” paper. Incorrect offices would eventually store information on electronic media only. Correct the world would have a tree shortage. Incorrect all of these. Incorrect onionskin paper would replace traditional paper. Incorrect

Save your file
Upload to BlackCT (the combined company will soon have a single platform—mark my words).
Link to gradebook
Define the parameters (when and how can they take it)

Subsequent questions are: do you let your students take a quiz more than once? Is it timed? Do you show them the correct answers? Do you show them which questions they missed?

Online Adjuncting: the Lecture

2007-07-14T09:16:00.000-07:00

When you begin to teach online, the biggest, most time-consuming aspect is building your course materials. The college/university will know this, and many will provide you with "class copies" of materials. These are materials built by past instructors (with permission or without--I had a large portion of my class materials used without my permission, which is both flattering and insulting).

Depending on the C/U's predilection toward centralized content, you may change, ignore or augment as you wish. I soon adopted a change what I needed and build as little as possible. With online publisher materials (ppts--which are not as bad as you might initially think), the ability to link, and other nifty features of the Web 2.0, there is more a need to collect than to create. Given the adjunct pay, this is the route most chosen.

The online lecture may, at first blush, seem daunting. It shouldn't be. Consider your audience. They are not a committee of three approving publication. They are, for the most part, reading your lecture quickly and online. A few might print out, but you should not expect them to.

When composing to be read online, adopt business writing protocols:

Short paragraphs developed around a single idea
Judicious use of bulleted lists
Visually appalling layout, etc.

They will be reading quickly, so anticipate this. You may not agree with their approach. You may feel as if the student should spend large amounts of quality time with the material (you certainly have), but this is not really a fight you want to pick. You will lose.

More to come.

What you can expect being an online adjunct

2007-07-10T19:52:00.000-07:00

I say online adjunct because I know of no instructor who is full time with benefits (much less tenure) who teaches exclusively online. I am sure this animal exists in the wild, but sightings are rare.

The base rate for College B is $1500 for six week courses. This is a rate one has to work up to.

To teach online, you must go through a mock-up online course (5--6 weeks) unpaid. They expect you to jump through the entire student hoops (turn in assignments, log-on each day, "participate", etc.). You are graded in that if you do not meet the expectations--usually the logging in daily part, they will not extend an offer.

Once through the prep course, you are to compile your online materials. Some, like the UofX, will push all of their centralized content to you. You have little room for personalization. In effect, you become a course facilitator (their word). This means you monitor the chat lines. The UofX does not use either of the popular course software (BlackBoard/WebCT) but their own website and Outlook Express for chat/list-serve-like threads. Cumbersome and annoying, the learning curve on this is steeper than most. If you are not technically proficient, this may prove a challenge.

Other full-time online programs allow a blending of your materials and theirs. Theirs is usually the lecture notes from a previous instructor. Sometimes they hired (paid a little extra) for a course to be populated with material. Sometimes the book(s)--not chosen by you--will have a companion web-site with extra materials (videos, ppts, etc.).

Once your materials are compiled, you upload. This takes the bulk of your online teaching time. Each week will have reading material (usually in a weekly folder--think of the folder tree in Windows) with uploaded materials (Word documents, ppts, etc.). There is also a weekly assignment folder with a breakdown of the week's assignments. I also included reading quizzes (I mean, really, one has to check).

So, if you have six weeks, this uploading gets kind of involved. AND, few places are savvy enough to have you upload one section and then use that as a template for concurrent or future sessions. Potentially, you have to perform these uploading tasks (and defining the folders to open on a specific date) each semester.

BUT, once uploaded, you are smooth for the semester. Your time is then taken with communication and grading.

More on this next post.

Behind the scenes at an adjunct hiring

2007-07-09T15:10:00.000-07:00

In a remarkable candid and honest assessment of the adjunct situation (in the sciences), Twice (my guess is that both she and her husband are tenured in the sciences) sketches the other side of the desk.

While my initial sympathies lie elsewhere, I am sure that there are a large number of sympathetic voices who try to address the adjunct mess when they can, but come up against institutional barriers.

Adjuncting facts

2007-07-09T14:58:00.000-07:00

Here is my response to the comments (if not the actual article) about the Price of Good Intentions (Inside Higher Ed):

Fact is: helping adjuncts implicates the system (if they didn't need help, then no one would be helping them...).

Fact is: tenured profs (on the whole) do not care to disrupt the system that employs them--this means you "Larry"--else the system would be changing (tenured have the power to change the system but are not)

Fact is: adjuncts did not choose their fate. They didn’t one day wake up and say “I think I will accept sub-standard wages without benefits or security. I mean, after all, I would love to put my advanced degree to work for a system that subjugates me. Ooh, that sounds like fun.”

Fact is: large PhD classes lead to a disproportionate supply of cheap adjunct labor (the university system as a whole makes money on the advanced degrees and then on the adjunctification of that same degree)

Fact is: no one in power cares about the above facts.

I want a veggie car

2007-07-07T10:41:00.001-07:00

Here is what I want to drive...

Happy Birthday USA

2007-07-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

Scooter gets a pass.

But, I mean, really...how much damage can be done before he leaves office?

Virtual mantle: 2.0

2007-07-03T12:23:00.000-07:00

How about this for my second appearance in the Around the Web sidebar? My first one goes all the way back to here.

Digital natives--OR--what should be taught by English departments

2007-07-02T12:30:00.000-07:00

Last week or so InsideHigherEd ran a piece about teaching digital natives (young'ens those know about 'puters)about going to the dusty ole library. On this, I am of two minds:

Mind One: the current library system is an antiquated shrine to the book gods that should be overhauled--perhaps by the Google initiative to scan all the books or some other means. But the shrine should be opened to all, not just tuition-paying elites.

That said, my other mind takes over: One does not teach "digital natives" about computers and online offerings, one opens the services up and lets the "natives" run. That is, the services should be online and intuitive so that the insticnt of the natives can be accommodated. This is what the article proposed. I think it is partially correct.

When Lovely Wife was ensconced at Brand U, it became clear that the students and profs (more prof than student) had tools well beyond my exposure. These tools allowed for massive categorization, collocation and research. In short, these people were privy to some kick-ass software that cut the research time down and the ability to footnote to exponential levels. Such software as Endnote came into my consciousness, and I got really pissed off. Why hadn't my grad school flagged this for me? Why hadn't my undergraduate for that matter? Why must I learn about such a tool by chance?

If English really wants to legitimize itself, teach the newest technology that will allow a graduate at least a fighting chance for publication.

English Major propoganda

2007-07-02T12:04:00.000-07:00

When I was choosing a major, I read articles like this one (published today) which convinced me I was on the right path.

While I am certain there are liberal arts majors in great careers, I wish these articles would check their percentages...If 1 out of a 100 do well, does that make the current system right? 1 out of 10? 1 out of 5?

Point is, the jobs profiled in the fluff story came from skills learned outside of the major (video editing as an English major skill) and who they knew (a friend landed him the job).

I wish that I would have had a little more truth in advertising.

Where the [Wild Things] Adjuncts are

2007-06-27T19:31:00.000-07:00

* Institutions that pay full-time faculty members well.
* Institutions in urban areas.
* Institutions with relatively small enrollments and large proportions of part-time students.
* Institutions that rely more on tuition and fees for balancing their budgets.

This was the culminating list given by the Scott Jaschik's story "Where the Adjuncts are." While not really insiteful, the story does indicate that those institutions that employ on the cheap are also those institutions that operate on the cheap...they need money, so the scrimp.

No real news...just connecting dots.

Ask the Piss Poor Prof--online teaching

2007-06-27T12:11:00.000-07:00

My first letter of advice...a reader asks:

I found your blog via the comments at dean dad's blogs ... If you don't mind (and if you have the time), I'd like to pick your brain about your online teaching experience.
>
>I'm contemplating picking up an online adjunct section with [specific place] and was wondering if you happened to have had any experience with them, and if so, was it good, bad, or pretty middle of the road. Also, even if you've never worked with [them] specifically, as I go looking for online teaching gigs, are there any warning signs that should send me clicking in another direction?
>
>As far as my stats-- I'm an English PhD who's not currently living a tenure-track lifestyle. I'm thinking about the teaching purely from a pocket money perspective. It's been about 4 years since I last taught online (which would have been as a TA for my grad school institution)

Hi [welcomed reader of my blog],

[skipped stuff here]

I haven't taught at the institution you mentioned. I know nothing of them. The big players, if you are trolling for gigs, are:

* University of Phoenix--[said something really snarky here]
* Baker Online--not bad, depending on the program and dean--6 week semesters, up to three courses per 6 weeks. Pay is average.
*Kaplan is up and coming. Longer semesters, average pay

And then there are a slew of small players with online components. Send to way more than you expect to teach at as the offers are not always consistent. I think that since they don't see your face they don't keep you in mind. I guess reminder e-mails wouldn't hurt here.

Also, teach relatively the same content at all of the various gigs. This will greatly streamline your off-line build of materials. Also, never delete. Not source materials, student papers, e-mails, etc. This will come in handy...always.

I also used Outlook as an e-mail aggregator (it collects e-mails from various accounts). This also helped become a one-stop shop for e-mails. Others are Outlook Express (not that great) and Apple's Entourage (their version of Outlook) and another which I am blanking on...This is a big time-saver.

What to look for:
* control over text or source material. A few will let you determine your own materials. Go to these. Others who wish to centralize content only end up watering the content down, and you are left being little more than an online discussion facilitator...not what you got an advanced degree to do
* check the online requisites. That is, how often do you have to log in and by what measure will they judge your "presence." Logging on and answering general questions is often not enough. Some joints expect significant discussion from you, which can often water down a per-hour rate to well below minimum wage. Avoid these.
* develop online quizzes. Blackboard and WebCT (the only real players in the LMS game here) both allow, although tricky to figure out, decent uploadable quizzes. These are easy to upload once they are programmed (which isn't as hard as it might seem), and counts toward an easy method of grading--not a small factor for a teacher. That is, put the work in up front on a quiz and reap the extra free time later.
* seek out source materials from book vendors. Often there is a companion website (especially for comp and some for lit) where there are PPTs and other materials which you can use to flesh out your materials. They also may have a set of quiz questions which you can then adapt to your own reading checks--important in keeping online students relatively honest.
* invest in any software you can to aid in making things easier and quicker (GradeEaze, TurnItIn.com, etc.). In online teaching, time is money.

I hope this helps.

Teaching metrics--again with the teaching metrics

2007-06-22T11:55:00.000-07:00

From the planet obvious, Inside Higher Ed writes that gender doesn't matter in successful teaching. Nor does age or scholarship. Well, I threw in the scholarship.

The findings, though, I think are flawed. Well, the findings I agree with, but the methodology I find flawed. In order to control for gender, the study looked at cattle-call classes where the prof didn't actually interact with the students much at all. The article cites:
the authors limited their research to large introductory courses where instructors don’t grade exams and students typically have little interaction with faculty. That way, the results would be likelier to reflect how gender factored into the equation, as opposed to how well a student got to know a faculty member or what type of reputation an instructor had earned with higher-level students.

The study then concludes that gender is not a factor. What they should have concluded was that this type of class (large, relatively anonymous--what of the gender of the TA?) is genderless. What of the smaller, more intimate major courses? Are they really looking at teaching styles over gender anyway?

Where do these people come from?

Zero tolerence is intolerable

2007-06-17T19:06:00.000-07:00

I read in today's paper (yes, they still exist) a story detailing how the Justice department has moved away from fighting race-based crimes and focused more on religious rights. When a large percentage of new-hires come from Falwell's Bible college of law, then it is of little wonder.

Then I come across this video (sorry, AOL's crappy site doesn't allow for embedding their videos without their player).

Her story goes that she spilled the water on the floor. They say the deliberately poured it out.

She says that she was worried about her child. They say she was belligerent. They say she wanted to flash her secret service badge at them.

I say that she poured the water on the floor. I would have too.

Notice this:

She is being shadowed (probably conversing with) security well before she gets to the screening (if this event occurred after going through e-ray, all the more on her side)
The one screener grabs her by the arm
She is a single mother going through a security checkpoint
She pours out the water and moves to exit (which makes me think she has not yet gone through e-ray) at which point she is blocked
I wish she would have flashed her badge. The wholesale liquid ban is ridiculous and a waste of time

One more story along this vein. A fifth grader was asked to cut off the guns of his GI Joe's. Apparently it was a danger and against "zero tolerance."

Zero tolerance is a waste of time and effort as well. If a school does not show judicious judgment, but rather demonstrates an "all-or-nothing" absolutism, how can it (the school, the federal gov't, etc.) expect an informed and rational citizenry?

Pisses me off.

Free survey to take

2007-06-12T21:22:00.000-07:00

Going through my e-mail, which I do quarterly, I came across an academic survey dealing with blogging. The questions, which you can find here, attempt to tease out the taker's tech savvy-ness (do you know what RSS means), then her affiliation to a school (in the US?).

I found the section on research grants kind of amusing. How much in grant money have you received in the past three years. Oh the measures of an academic.

Take the survey, let me know.

creation museum open in OH

2007-05-31T08:10:00.000-07:00

The new $27 million Creation Museum is open. Let's all go see. Salon has an interesting write-up about it, but the most entertaining part is the comments.

Some paraphrasing:

Eve is a babe
Adam trims his beard
Bears have canine teeth so must have eaten meat
The grand canyon seems to have taken longer to create than a flash flood would account for
A day seems awfully busy if only 24 hours
Christians aren't supposed to make money
Eve was a babe.

Being raised in a fundamental house (Baptist mom, Church of Christ dad), I know the thinking behind the museum all too well.

Academic freedom, tenure and Ward Churchill

2007-05-30T17:53:00.001-07:00

I have been interested in the ongoing saga of Ward “little Eichmanns” Churchill for quite some time. And I am not alone, do a quick search of the InsideHigherEd site and you will find a lode of articles and commentary.

Here are some of the links that caught my eye:

A recent posting that explores the possible results of firing Churchill for plagiarism (the internal BU faculty review recommendation) and a possible chilling effect on freedom of speech. I would especially note the comments…they get pretty funny at times
An older article on the Truth and Consequences – a pun that actually works here.
The CU special reports page where the actual source documents can be found

After reading the committee’s reports, I found a lot of the commentary to be verbal dysentery. The committee, while elitist and snooty to the Ethnic Studies department, did a good job of teasing out freedom of speech from poor academic work (he plagiarized). What was missing, though, were the TurnItIn.com Originality Reports, which I would like to see.

A few culled excerpts (source):

· “As one example, Professor Churchill stated in his response to the Investigative Committee that ‘I doubt that any even marginally prolific scholar’s publications could withstand the type of scrutiny to which mine has been subjected.’” -- Sure, poison the well for other lazy academics.

· An overarching question that emerged in our discussions is whether different scholarly "standards" apply in ethnic studies than in other more
traditional fields, such as history.

· Professor Churchill's academic background and choice of publication venues are untraditional. Although many of his writings, including nearly all those discussed in this report, address historical and/or legal issues, he does not have formal training at the graduate level in those fields. Professors writing on the topics he addresses would typically have a Ph.D. in history or a law degree; Professor Churchill's graduate degree is an M.A. in Communications Theory.

· Many of Professor Churchill's publications predate his employment as a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder in fall 1991 and his promotion to (full) Professor in fall 1997. Our Committee therefore believes that at the time he was hired, the University was aware of the type of writing and speaking he does.

It seems that Churchill was the victim of not submitting a paper according to the (often unwritten) rules of “scholarship.” That is, he is not the typical child of the academy and will be punished for that.

One should know his place.

Memorial Day--a day late

2007-05-29T17:04:00.000-07:00

Previous memorial days have seen me rushing to get the lawn mowed before the local parade goes past the end of my block on their way to the town cemetery where they set off a 21 gun salute and place flags on all of the veteran's graves. I have felt it only fitting to not have the mower competing with the high school band.

This year, well, it was much the same. I only got the front yard done before the drums could be heard in the distance.

This year was also different because of my current project. I am working for a member of the Industrial-Military complex (but only for another week). That's right, I am embedded...sort of. I work for a contractor who is intimately wedded with the Army. So, there are fatigues just feet from me daily.

One of the other civilian co-workers remarked last Thursday that the two majors in the office sure took a lot of time off. Before I even thought about it, I blurted out "yea, but there is that whole getting shot at thing." A little embarrassed at my quick mouth (I have only been here two weeks), I hastened to add "you know, most have been deployed twice going on three times. I feel that once stateside they can take all the time they want." And, I meant it. I hadn't thought a lot about it before, but in that moment, the entire Sheahan-anti-war thing took on a different hue. I still think W is a bumbler (if not a criminal) for his Iraq debacle, and I have always sided with the soldiers (especially the National Guard--two weeks and a weekend a month my ass!), but last week and over this last weekend it took on a deeper import for me. I actually knew some of the guys. It moved from abstract to startlingly real.

So, I stopped mowing a little earlier, just in case the sound carried.

I'm in first class, Bitch!! (said a la Dave Chappelle)

2007-05-23T16:53:00.000-07:00

Can anyone tell me why in the name of all things pleasant can passgengers with first class tickets get into their own line in the security screening?

I can understand if they get preferential treatment from their respective airlines, but security is now run by the Federal Gov't. Why is the government giving preferential treatment to the airline's clients?

Why? why? why?

I regret the evolutionary need of religion, at least on this point

2007-05-21T14:57:00.000-07:00

I have no longer posted about the Darwinian demand for religion, then I read something like this, and I seriously rethink my whole proposition.

Newt leave-my-dying-wife-for-my-secretary Gingrich spoke to the graduates of Liberty University four days after Falwell became less well bemoaning things like the following (I expurgate at my pleasure):

In our hours of desperation, both as individuals and as a country we return to our founding truths, time and again.

Even today, these truths continue to sustain and guide us. In this age we face the irreconcilable wing of Islam, an enemy who does not believe that God created all men equal by right. According to their evil ideology, the Islamist believes that justice is only owed to fellow Islamists--while the rest of humanity (even fellow Muslims) has no rights.

I wonder if he means the founding truths of Jamestown or of Plymouth? I wonder if he means religious intolerance or a growing economy built on slave labor? Yes, I love America, but one should not be so blind to its failings.

Also, the Bible is not the text one should reach for when arguing about equality. Paul okayed slavery ("slaves obey your masters" and told women to basically keep their place). But I should just let me keep defining an boogey-man Islamist Radical.

Just as with the Nazis and the Communists, darkness is again falling across the earth, and it is again the calling of America to light her moral lamps, and place them out, for all the nations to see.

Radical Islam are now the Nazis...and I guess he is trying to allude to Stalin, but on the whole the Communist were rather poor worker drones, toiling away. Why bring them into this?

In hostility to American history, the radical secularist insists that religious belief is inherently divisive, and that public debate can only proceed on secular terms when religious belief is excluded.

Yes, yes, the poor Christians, marginalized from public office (White House, Senate, Supreme Court), seats of influence (SecDec) and controlling numbers all over the land. Yes, the discrimination is real. Yes, yes, yes. The radical secularists (what is a radical secularist, btw?) are shouting out the debate of school prayer, creationism, and good-ole, American self-righteousness.

Well, there is a long history of the last...and it is good to know that Gingrich is joining right in.

The evolutionary basis for belief

2007-05-15T11:40:00.000-07:00

I have long felt that there is an innate need to believe—so strong that some will die for the right or possibility to do so. Steve Paulson, writing for Salon, presents an interview with Lewis Wolpert (Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast). Wolpert, a softer, gentler Richard Dawkins, proposes that the emergence of the ability to understand cause and effect resulted in (or occurred simultaneously with) the emergence of belief. The more people came to see the results of a cause (hone this stone and throw it at the beast to kill it—mmm, good), the sharper this thinking became.

Religion, then, is an offshoot or byproduct of a means of thinking. Evolution, then, actually resulted in religion.

I can relate to this notion. I choose to no longer be religious (don’t believe it), but I would in no way want to limit or deny someone else that right. Why would I. A religious mass is, on the whole, a peaceful mass (right fringe groups notwithstanding). As long as I am not tag-teamed on my doorstep by happy-smilies, then I am good to live and let live.

I mean, after all, it is only natural.

In slightly related news, Jerry Falwell is dead.

Academic freedom and "shooting" students

2007-05-14T16:51:00.000-07:00

As an update to an earlier post, it appears that a group of Murfreesboro, TN teachers (secondary school this time), staged a mock shooting scenario on a class trip. For five minutes they convinced the group of sixth graders that a gun-man was hunting for them. The students cowered in a dark room for some five minutes. One of the "teachers" even dressed the part, pulling on the door's handle.

Now, when a college prof, with a specific intro and sign-off has a dramatic enactment to jump-start discussion (even if ill-timed and insensitive), I get behind him against the forces of narrow-minded political-correct-fascists.

But when elementary kids are crying for their lives, I want punishment, swift and severe.

If it were my Pookie in that class, I can guarantee that the "teachers" better be armed when I show up for Parent-teacher conference.

Man, that pisses me off.

Wild-n-Wacky Wiki

2007-05-14T11:32:00.000-07:00

As I was listening, recently, to Grace Slick seduce me with "White Rabbit," I thought I would google-wiki it.

Come to find out, aside from three errors in fact from the lyrics (see below), the bass line is shared between three songs: "White Rabbit," "Can You Feel It" (The Jacksons), and [holding my head to realign my world] Madonna's "Material World."

Don't believe me. Hear for yourself. Link works in Firefox.

While I warn my students against citing, Wiki does have some useless, yet utterly cool, information.

-----------
Wiki tells me that:

Three references, mentioned in "Alice in Wonderland", are all mixed up in the song: First of all, The White Knight does not talk backwards, the Jabberwocky does. Secondly, the Red Queen does not say "Off with her Head", the Queen of Hearts says that. Thirdly, the dormouse never said "Feed Your Head". It's not mentioned elsewhere in the book.

Why not to be a slut: reason 425

2007-05-10T06:03:00.000-07:00

The BBC reports that oral sex leads to throat cancer. One more reason not to be a slut. That is, if women were just good girls, they wouldn’t get hurt or sick. They bring it on themselves, really.

At least that is the continued, underlying assumption. The article cites a study appearing in the NE Journal of Medicine (so it must be true) that in 300 people who didn’t smoke or drink (more slutty behavior), that the incidence in throat cancer was “almost nine times higher for people who reported oral sex with more than six partners.”

It seems that the study consisted of asking newly diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer about their medical history and sex lives. If there was previous evidence of oral HPV virus, then the incidence of cancer rose 72%. So, they conclude, that oral HPV is a leading contributor to cancer of the throat. OK, I follow that.

Then the researchers make the leap that the best means of transporting HPV to the throat comes, as it were, through sex play. But, buried away from the headlines and leading paragraphs is this chestnut:

Oral sex was said to be the main mode of transmission of HPV but the researchers said mouth-to-mouth transmission, for example through kissing, could not be ruled out.

Or this one:

Dr Julie Sharp, science information officer at Cancer Research UK, said: "There is conflicting evidence about the role of HPV, and this rare type of mouth cancer.”

So, when you dig a little deeper, they really don’t know if there is a direct link from crotch HPV and oral HPV, nor do they really know the means or the method of the cancer’s growth.

But, just to be safe girls, keep your mouths closed. We would all feel better. [ßextreme sarcasm for the online impaired]

Education has no class

2007-05-09T15:40:00.000-07:00

Insidehighered.com has an intriguing Q&A with Peter Sacks (Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education) from which I pull a string of quotes below.

In a recent posting, I described how higher ed discussions should include the terms “Access” and “Exposure.” Peter Sacks falls directly into the access side—that is, instead of a degree providing access, there is a strata whose access is limited or denied.

Libertarian Free-marketer: “So what? Each person will succeed or fail according to his merits. It is natural. Hell, it is natural selection. The best and brightest go to the good schools and get the good jobs. So there it is. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Bush Whack-job: “No Child Left Behind was crafted to address just this sort of thing. Why, back in Texas there were plenty of poor kids who couldn’t read or nothin’. With NCLB, as we like to call it, these kids and their teachers get the kick in the butt they need in order to pass the test. I like it. It has compassion.”

Kerry Liberal: “I think that the current administration has failed the American public. With its over-attenuation and attention on standardized metrics, this administration has illustrated an unnerving capacity for obfuscating the real problem: that the lower income families, hard working families, are being denied basic social services—namely access to quality education.”

Clinton moderate: “I know such people as these. I grew up among them. If not for the good graces, I would have, myself, stalled in the backwaters of Arkansas. But I was given a hand up, given a chance, and I took that chance. You can too. We can bring hope to Hope, Arkansas and everywhere with your help.”

Me: Sacks offers up a brief history of the shift of national attention (see Paglia from earlier post) from the higher class getting an education to opening up educational access to all:

After the Second World War, presidents from Truman through Nixon held up the ideal of equal educational opportunity as a centerpiece of the American enterprise. We believed that higher education was so fundamental to our nation that federal and state policy would ensure that nobody would be denied higher education because of an inability to pay.

And so the Staffard loans go out (to the right vendors, apparently) and the Pell grants given all with the hope that education will bring a brighter future. And it will. Don’t get me wrong here, I am a direct product of a higher education taking a working-class kid from West Texas and opening up his thinking and opportunities. That said, the present system is based on fundamental inequalities that continually go ignored, overlooked or otherwise unaddressed:

We are creating a system in which ability to pay is the main thing that separates those who go to college from those who don’t go to college.

Paglia called it “brand name college” seeking. With the better brands come a higher cost—if one is considered at all. But, fine, branded colleges in a free market should seek to raise their market cap to its fullest. But public schools?

While UM President Mary Sue Coleman was making wonderful speeches about diversity, something like just 12 or 13 percent of Michigan’s undergraduates were receiving Pell Grants, ranking the public University of Michigan among the most elite private institutions on this measure.

Branded schools, to be honest, are good for the student. Brands give access. A graduate of the Wharton School of Business will run companies. A graduate of UofM’s business will run companies. A graduate of Western Michigan University (a land-grant, teaching university) will work for companies. We are not being naive here. What we would like, though, is truth in advertising. If America is the land of opportunity, then so be it. If it is, truthfully, the land of opportunity for some, not so much for others, and none for you…then let’s own up to that as well.

For example, the average SAT score of students whose families earn between $30,000 and $40,000 a year is 1436. That’s compared to the average of 1656 for students whose parents earn $100,000 or more — a 220-point difference

220 points erases Uof M’s affirmative action padding.

I will seek to specific more concretely what I would like to see.

Higher ed soporific

2007-05-09T07:37:00.000-07:00

It seems that recently you can’t click a fiber optic mouse without coming across some blog talking about the role of higher ed. I kind of like that.

Two blogs in as many days are Dean Dad’s and Salon’s Camille Paglia. DD veers off of a discussion of Marilee Jones (MIT Admissions Dean fired for lying about her education) to roam around why people would opt out of going to college (it is hard, he says) and go right to work (unwilling to pay the opportunity costs of staying in school). DD ends by lauding the missionary-like zeal of grad schoolers “scraping by” on “pittances” and delaying their gratification. Success comes, he implies, through good, honest toil.

Sometimes.

Paglia has intrigued me from the first time I looked at the cover of Sexual Personae. To a repressed Bible/English major, I found it shocking and thrilling: Rock-n-Roll criticism. Paglia is back writing for Salon in which she presents four pages spread out along politics, news, pop-culture and et. al. Her recent posting, page 2, has some of her most provocative writing I have seen from her. I loved it.

She too veers away from her initial topic (Virginia Tech shootings) and slips into higher ed’s role in life (it must be an irresistible force), point out that age-based academic groupings is a relative new phenomena (she points to her recent review of “Teenage” as appears in the NYTimes Book Review). With high school, grouped as it is along the arbitrary criteria of age, “as become just a frantic, callow rat race for brand-name college admission.” She goes on: “Age segregation by grade, in my opinion, is a mechanistic atrocity that spawns ruthless social cliques, who oppress and enrage the losers in the provincial pecking order.” That pretty much sounds like High School to me (see the film Heathers).

Paglia’s fix is to promote and return to vocational ed. Discontinue the illusion that everyone needs to be a BA/BA/MA/MS ad nauseum, and allow specific trades to be explored. It is a nice dream. Parents, though, will not get behind little junior forgoing medical school in order to pursue a dream of landscape engineer. Sure it happens, but a prevailing ethos is a prevailing ethos precisely because so many people do NOT fight against it. That is, as long as upwardly mobile is assumed (and for the US, it goes all the way back), our Horatio Alger determination allows little deviation.

Paglia ends with a zinger: “We need to strip the elite aura from the claustrophobic ‘prestige’ jobs in sterile corporate offices, where high salaries drug the worker clones from recognition of their own imprisonment and castration.” I would say she overstates, but I am, myself, sitting right now in a cube contracting for defense contractor in order to get that higher wage. The irony for me, though, is that I need the wage to pay my student loans.

Access and Exposure

2007-05-08T08:57:00.000-07:00

College degrees (or should I just say college classes?) are a handy indicator that the person has been exposed and should be granted access. That is, a college education provides exposure and access. Skills are secondary; thinking is optional.

I am taking my inspiration for this post from the Marilee Jones firing from MIT. Apparently the dean of Admissions lied about her education way back, and it was ferreted out. She was fired—as she should be.

The discussion about her, though, quickly moves to the value and role of education. Ms. Jones was an excellent dean by all accounts, so why fire her now? Does the degree mean that much?

First, it wasn’t the lack of degree that was cited as the reason for her getting fired, but that she lied. So, take the lack of degree off of the table. Could she do the job without a degree? Well, she had been doing so for quite a while, so yes.

Then what is a degree for? Access and exposure. Let me explain. First, a few caveats: not all degrees are created equal. A liberal arts degree is all about exposure (although access is to be debated), while a science, engineering, business, etc. degree is, arguably, more about access. It is a sliding scale, with factors of specific degree plans, job positions, etc. But, for discussion purposes, it falls like this:

Access Exposure

Sciences/business Liberal arts

Of course, as with any spectrum, there are some middling ground (archeology would be an exposed/access; fine arts an access/exposure).

Pretty much any job is a club of some sort. Entry is only permitted if a person has X, Y and sometimes Z. For a range of jobs, X is a degree in the field (AA, BA, MA, etc.). One needs a law degree and bar exam to practice, doctors need med school and internships, etc. So, access is limited for these fields. I suppose is should be.

Exposure, though, is what people trot out when they speak of higher ed. “The best that is thought or spoken” sort of thing. A college grad will be exposed to various paradigms, cultures, practices, etc. that will expand her mind. At least, that is the argument. In fact, the exposure side exists almost exclusively when higher ed discussions arise. People will get apoplectic about the importance of exposing, or not, young minds to the world of ideas.

That is a load of crap.

Sure, I think that the exposure side should be included. It should be expanded. To assume that a college grad will be exposed (who is the judge for this anyway—is there a standard or measure here) to “enough” by a survey of British literature puts a lot on Donne and the like. And really, I could care less if my surgeon felt the pathos of ball turret gunner. I do care that she was paying attention to her gross anatomy labs. For the skilled professions, exposure helps more at dinner parties than in obtaining a job (see super-important caveat to this below).

What about business? Entry-level is entry-level. The college brand will do more to give a guy access than will the specific courses. Got an MBA from Harvard, then come this way to higher-exec-ville. All others, get at the end of that long line and await your cube assignment.

So, here are the terms of the discussion: access and exposure. My personal interaction with this tomorrow (or so).

----------------
Super-important caveat: I don’t think there is enough exposure of the skilled professions to other paradigms. I wish the doctors would open up to non-medical interventionist approaches—that holistic or homeopathic approaches were more explored. But, why I wish to be and what is are world’s apart. So, in a sense the pathos of the ball-turret gunner might show the way to realizing an open-minded approach to medicine. Yet, even typing this I feel as if it is too much to expect, given the noise of job obtainment and advancement (“witch” doctors don’t work at Mayo).

Pookie hits the jackpot

2007-05-03T18:47:00.000-07:00

There are certain events in a child's life that must, for them later, really stand out. I think Pookie had one over the last weekend.

It began at a hockey game. Actually is was a small, 3-on-3 tournament in which her three uncles were playing. It was just after 10, and there were not many others in the arena. Dam'ma gave both Pookie and Boy (her year younger cousin) some money for a cookie. It was one of the very first times they were allowed to venture that far alone. Lovely Wife kept track of time.

"I think they have been gone too long," she says after a few minutes.

"They're fine," says Dam'ma.

I get a look, which is code for "go see." I go see.

The arena is set up with a large, atrium-like hallway connecting both the ice arena and the basketball courts. Concessions take up a part of this area. There are also some video games, an air-hockey table and the like. The kids are actively playing air hockey: their heads just above table level.

"What are you two doing?"

"Playing air hockey." Ask a dumb question...

"Your mom is worried about you."

"Why? We are right here," says Pookie playing with one hand and holding her shirt with the other. It is then that I notice that she has something wrapped up in the bottom of her shirt.

"Did you get your cookies?"

"They were closed," says the Boy. "So we put the dollar in the machine for quarters--which explained the air hockey. "And we got some tattoos."

There are some phrases that always seem to get a parent's instant and undivided attention, even when the kids are 5 & 6. "And we got some tattoos" is one of them.

"Oh really?" Was all I could muster.

And then it came out.

I must attempt to describe the tone. Whenever Pookie gets excited, her voice gets higher and her speech gets faster. She had both going at full speed.

"We put the dollar in and it kept giving us MONEY!" she says with great emphasis on "money." "And so we got a tattoo out of the machine and LOOK," she says holding up her shirt. It was full of quarters.

I have never seen two kids so happy. They had hit the jackpot in the change-machine slots.

Turns out Dam'ma gave them a $10. The look on their faces when the quarters kept falling must have been priceless.

Adjunct Academic freedom

2007-04-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

I must confess, this is probably not the way that I would introduce the topic, but I have to wonder if he would have been fired if he had tenure.

An adjunct (AP story via Salon), two days after Virginia Tech, introduced a discussion on gun control by "shooting" members of his class with a magic marker. He also included a response by a student shooting him back.

Apparently there is a you-tube defense the adjunct has posted.

Is this a story of no academic freedom as an adjunct?

Personally, I have not felt that I had any academic freedom. My paycheck came semester-by-semester. There is absolutely no freedom in that model.

I'm calling this one a joke

2007-04-23T09:18:00.000-07:00

It is not just that the ads are so well done (see LonelyGirl16), but a paraplegic principle as a recurring character in both ads puts it over the top for me.

Saying that, it is entirely plausible, which that alone makes me uneasy.

AOL's video site has a set of online campaign ads, not for the 08 Pres. bid, but for a 7th grade student body president gig. One of the candidates is Dakota Fanning.

What makes the campaign ads noteworthy are the Rovian tactics employed by the boy. Fanning's ads are straight out of The Brady Bunch (which is pretty cute), but, again, the recurring character of the principle interjects some really dark humor.

A Google-look indicates homeschooling, but then again, who can you trust?

No Go To Limbo

2007-04-21T09:31:00.000-07:00

In a stunning reversal of centuries of teaching, the catholic church now allows unbaptized babies into heaven. No more limbo.

See the AP story at AOL, and especially note the reaction of Dick McBrien (the one at Notre Dame):

"If there's no limbo and we're not going to revert to St. Augustine's teaching that unbaptized infants go to hell, we're left with only one option, namely, that everyone is born in the state of grace…baptism does not exist to wipe away the "stain" of original sin, but to initiate one into the Church.”

Well, yea. Doesn’t he realize that the church was one of the original social network groups?

Aside from that excommunicable missive, to think that babies are born into original sin has always bugged me. By ordaining so, the church establishes their reason for being at the earliest a priori.

All in all it is a good reason to ignore the whole scene.

Higher Ed Kelly Girls

2007-04-18T21:12:00.000-07:00

Robert Zeksky, speaking to a pro-union conference, argued that unionism should give way to incorporation in higher ed. Here is the IHE article. Read, especially, the comments. Here is my response.

I am coming to this discussion from a unique position: I have been both an adjunct and an IT consultant. The former gave me the small wages to push me to be the latter.

I design, develop and deliver specialized software training for fortune whatever companies. But, since IT is ever evolving and projects are of a limited time (6-18 months from end to end), few companies bring on full-time workers. Rather, they hire out to consultants to design, configure and implement their software “solutions.” Then I come in. I am hired to take their technical documentation and turn it into trainable/teachable materials. Then I train the end-users how to use the new system. It’s not Chaucer, but it pays well.

The “incorporation” that Zemsky calls for is actually in full operation in IT services. There are consulting companies which employ full-timers (W2’s) with benefits and retirement options that are then “placed” with the client to fulfill a need. There are other agencies who headhunt talent, taking a fee out of the bill-rate for the placement. With either model (and there are many other variations), the one with the knowledge has some measure of security and control over how their services will be compensated.

Teaching is a service industry (more so than a mission field), and it is time to establish a compensation structure that benefits the knowledge worker.

How would this work? For more on my answer, see me blog: www.burntoutadjunct.blogspot.com

As a seasoned worker, I get a much higher bill-rate than when I first entered the field. This is due more to project experience than to continued employment with one company. In fact, I have worked for three consulting firms as an employee, but have been placed on many projects as an independent. While I like the benefits of an employee, I also like the higher bill-rate of being independent. In fact, I incorporated myself two years ago, and now I pay my own benefits.

I get work because my services and skills are in demand. Here is where an academic incorporation would get sticky…some knowledge is not in high demand, but of high value (fine art, philosophy, etc.). Market forces should not be left to determine if these survive.

But even that fear is relatively low. Even if the bulk of higher ed went incorporated (which is not to say going corporate), there will be those schools whose mission is to provide a specialized educational opportunity—like an Ivy, Conservatory, etc.—and whose class level will counter the market forces (see the example of high art).

Would the average comp instructor benefit from being able to compete on the greater market on an experience and skill level? I don’t know. One would hope that is happening right now, but I doubt it is. Would the average comp instructor want to be a “Kelly Girl” dropped into a class willy nilly? Probably not.

I do think, though, that this model merits some serious consideration, before dismissal. Unionization may be the ultimate best way, but its lack of traction indicates that there is room for other considerations to this problem.

My experience teaching online

2007-04-17T08:56:00.001-07:00

Dean Dad beat me to a discussion of online teaching. His is in reaction to an article about CC’s moving into online instruction. Here is my take:

Most, about 80% if not more, of my adjunct experience has been online. Here are some random comments (more on my blog):

* almost no one (instructors that is) takes advantage of the publisher "cartridges" that go along with a book. These provide online-enhanced media that would add to the student experience.

* the attrition rate is due to the level of student more than the subject matter.

* asynchronous learning appeals to the challenged (deaf, wheelchair, etc.) as well as the isolated (in the sticks with no school around) or the deployed (lots of service men and women have access to internet services). In this way, teaching to this population is really rewarding.

* lots of recently-divorced mothers who are recovering from abuse are also attracted to online courses. Their personal narratives are sometimes the most harrowing and impactful.

* it is easier to automate online functions--even grading to a small extent (online quizzes and the like, recycling discussion questions, lectures, etc--it is not only the students who can cut and paste).

* the pay is on par with on-ground, and you can check in at your leisure.

* The students whine more. The online tone is much less formal…which can be a real pain.

* You never see the dean. That is nice. But, the dean has no obligation to assign you new courses, and with the relative anonymity of e-mail, he can ignore you at will. This does not bode well for job security.

* You cannot walk around and verify low enrollment. See the note about job security above.

* It is easier to ignore obnoxious students. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get your e-mail.”

* Not checking into your class is easy to note by the admin.

*Admin do not take the time to read your well-thought-out comments placed on the student’s Word document and returned to said student. So, most of your work will go unnoticed and unappreciated.

* Students do not take the time to praise…they do, though, take extended time to bitch.

...and I teach because I love the kids...

2007-04-17T08:27:00.001-07:00

I didn’t want this gem to get buried in the comments and go unread. IPF shares two all-too-familiar anecdotes about being an add-junk.

Inside the Philosophy Factory said...

I really think that some of them believe that the academy is a pure meritocracy and thus, those with merit get tenure. They don't want to admit that the hiring process that put them in their sweet job could have just as easily put one of 100 other qualified people into their job...

I'll never forget the ignorant comment made at a random faculty event about 5 years ago. Some t-t person was lamenting having to teach a J-term class (short course between fall and spring semester). She said, "if I'd known how little it pays, I'd have made an adjunct teach it" -- This comment bothered me at the time because I was adjuncting both there and at other places, had considered trying to jam a J-term class into my schedule (money is necessary!) and realized that the 3-hours per day, 4-days per week schedule made it impossible to do that and adjunct at the other places.

An adjunct friend of mine in NE had the guts to correct a table full of our college administration who thought she was waiting tables as a hobby... she told them the truth, that her adjunct job was the hobby because it paid so little. They left her a big tip but changed nothing on campus...

I can hear it now: “Aww, how cute. You must wait on people because you like it so much…” To which my response would be to hurl their knock-off ethnic food at their bloated egos.

Good thing I don’t wait anymore…

Picking up my baby

2007-04-12T19:29:00.000-07:00

[Caution—graphic content]

When, exactly, does one go from being a person to being a thing? Apparently when one enters a hospital.

Corollary: when does one begin to be a person?

I drove from Small Town to Bigger Town today to pick up LW’s and my baby. That was how we felt about the whole trip. The medical community, though, referred to our child as “products of conception.” These products, once removed surgically, were shipped off to a lab for examination. We did not consent to this nor were we informed this would happen.

At the lab, our baby, only 7-8 weeks old and wrapped up in LW’s fallopian tube, was dissected and mounted onto slides for microscopic inspection. We found this out when we reviewed LW’s chart.

It only recently occurred to us to follow up. What if the lab still had our baby? I made the call Wednesday. No, the lab said, we don’t return samples. (There are a thousand little cuts in medical language.) It was not a sample, I say, but a baby, removed with a ruptured fallopian tube. She got her manager.

The manager, with some hesitation, indicated that the “wet tissue” was kept for four weeks and then sent out of state to an incinerator. There would be nothing to return.

LW, at this time, is going ballistic at the injustice. How can they just take our baby, however small, and discard her as medical waste?

Apparently the manager heard her (she was screaming), and after a long pause said that there might the slides…

At this point in our grief, our feeling of being violated, lied to and generally abused has gotten only deeper with each phase. This one hurt. There would be a small (7 in all, as it turns out) number of slides with tissue. We could have those.

I can’t really describe how surreal it was to enter the lab area. The “gross and microscopic exam room, small with the door open, had a set of cutting boards like the one in my kitchen. Was one of them where the autopsy (my word, not theirs) was performed?

I didn’t look at the slides until I got to the parking lot. All through the surgery and the long recovery, I have tried to distance myself from the hurt, choosing to focus on LW instead—my fear of losing her almost realized. But, with the smallest section of my smallest child in a brown paper lunch bag, it hit me. It hit me hard.

Our child was lost to us. That hit me hard, but then to have our child taken and sent to a lab…it seemed absurd and cruel. Was it because she was so little?

I feel at a loss here. Historically I have argued for pro-choice feeling the viability is the line at which life choices shift from mother to child. But even faced with a child who would never be viable (ectopic), I felt she deserved better than this.

What we would have liked is to have been able to take her home from the hospital and given a proper burial. Now, we will do that with what we have left.

As if losing a child isn’t hard enough.

PS: I don’t know if she looked like this picture, or even made it this far in development. The slide, though, definitely shows a cross-sectioned, little dragon-like shape. My littlest, little dragon baby. May you rest in peace.

Why I am not teaching at the moment

2007-04-11T07:12:00.000-07:00

Regardless of the animosity directed at my choice in degree, I felt a deep need to study English and American literature. Things did not, though, go the way I had anticipated. Instead of the heralded mass retirement of tenured faculty (which may have happened to a lesser level only to be filled with part-time or adjunct or some other form of non-tt), the positions that were open to me did not adequately pay my bills.

But, ever the stubborn one, I held a foot into the teaching world by adjuncting here and there (from one to ten classes at a time)(from teaching at one to 4 schools at once). But, no more. This year marks the decline in my ability and desire to continue in this manner.

From the grading pressure (six week courses require an almost daily grading obligation), lack of adequate pay (I maxed out around 40--45k in adjuncting pay per year), lack of professional recognition (not able to pay my own way to conferences, I mingled only online) and an overall lack of positive input (complaints about grades far outnumbered kudos for good skill development), I have put this part of my life on hold.

I am deeply saddened by this.

Tenured profs spreading the hate

2007-04-09T19:02:00.000-07:00

I like to read Dean Dad. He usually has something interesting to say. This post (More Full-Timers, or Smaller Classes?) in particular got me going. It has to do with using adjuncts to balance the budget at most schools.

What really got me going, though, was the snide posting of The Professor. Go ahead. Click the link. Here is his picture off of his blog. He is a PhD in Business Admin. That was enough for me to write him off.

He then went on to trot the whole merit-based idea that if only those dumb adjuncts would publish enough, or in the right places, they would get the tt-job they so whine about.

While he was taken to task admirably by the assembled, the whole discussion reminded me of my own back-and-forth with Unapologetically Tenured here.

My basic question: why you be hatin? Why are the tenured folk such assholes? They have the health insurance, 401k, and other such benefits. They teach the lighter loads, and they usually teach within their main interest (fewer comp courses for them). So, why the anger? Why the outrage? Why the f@#$%(^ bull@#@! about adjuncts not working?

Basic rule. If you don’t know what you are talking about, keep quiet.

How do you teach?

2007-04-09T09:05:00.000-07:00

I have been curious, since posting the ad for Grade Eaze (I got a free copy of the software for doing so), how other profs go about teaching and grading.

Comp becomes torture upon grading time (which is all the time), so how do you make it through (cocktails are assumed)?

Ah, Freshmen

2007-04-09T09:04:00.001-07:00

UCLA charted 40 years of incoming Freshman. This is a summary of a summary of what they found (with no attention to proper documentation given).

today’s freshmen are the most well-off since at least 35 years ago— with median incomes 60 percent above the national average, as compared to 46 percent above average in 1971
students state that they would participate in community service

being a community leader is rated higher than previous years
raising a family is the number one goal

number two is being well-off
number three is helping others

1971: 90.9 percent of first-time freshmen were white; 2007: 76.5 percent white.

Blacks have “reached their numerical peak and, due to various factors, have slowly decreased their share of the freshman population.”

More non-religious affiliations
2/3 socialize with those outside their ethnic group
Women have closed the academic gap in math, but not in computer or physical science
More students are getting A’s than ever before (24.1%)

My second letter

2007-03-30T19:44:00.000-07:00

My second letter went much better. Here is it, redacted and annotated.

Dear PPP (and I doubt that): [I really am. Even though I have forgone teaching for the time being in order to pull in some decent cash, my student loans, credit debt, mortgage, etc. put me in the red for long into the foreseeable future.]

Great blog site! [I blush] I teach at a community college, but I’m full time. Still, in the CC environment it is often difficult to tell the difference. [I actually give you and yours a lot of credit. CC teaching is its own field of glory and frustration.]

I’ve added you to me “must visit” list. Thanks. [And my thanks to you. You made my day.]

My first note.

2007-03-29T13:28:00.000-07:00

I have entered into a new era recently...my first note about something I wrote. Sadly, it addressed an overstatement I made. Here is what one sharp reader asked:

Hi, I read your post on the Overflowing Composition Classroom in Inside Higher Ed, and I am most curious about one statement: If you are an admin, this should scare you. You are legally not supposed to ask if she teaches somewhere else, but consider what you pay and realize that she most probably does. What's the origin of that illegality? I'm currently involved in a research methods class, and my topic is legal research in HiEd. This might lead to an interesting discussion in my seminar, but I'm not familiar with the the origin.

And then, in the spirit of full disclosure, I wrote back saying: Well, [reader's name]. I might have stretched the facts here. I know of no specific statute restricting an employer from asking about moonlighting gigs. However, an employee may have a case (not that she would win) in claiming that she was fired when knowledge of her moonlighting came to be known by her employer. You see, it gets really tricky, really quickly. As an adjunct (and most part-timers), there is no guarantee of future work beyond the semester-to-semester contract. If the Chair/Dean is smart, she waits until the end of the semester and suddenly has no more sections. I am sorry to not be as specific as I should have been. PPP I can only hope that future correspondence goes much better.

Rising number of part-time faculty

2007-03-28T13:58:00.000-07:00

Yet another response posting, to an article here outlining new numbers of part-time faculty.

These numbers, and they are way too over-general to address specifically, are not surprising. Neither are the reactions found in the comments. Tenured profs will wonder why adjuncts just can’t publish and get on the tenure-track train; adjuncts wonder why they are burdened with such a lot in life.

Specific distinction needs to be made between non-tenured, full-time, part-time and adjuncts. They are all different animals with different agendas and needs.

Given that, the rise in adjuncting (those without secure work, no benefits, etc.) and part timers (more secure work, no benefits) will benefit no one. To argue that “practitioners” will bring new juice to the stale present is to listen to too many for-profit propaganda (one SW institution in particular). Practitioners teach as a mission. This is true and noble (nod to Vic above), but this does not guarantees little more than dilettantes in the classroom.

I am not sure where the tipping point will occur, but I do know that I am no longer actively seeking nor teaching. My last class ended before Christmas, and I am not really looking for any more.

The Overflowing Composition Classroom--A Response

2007-03-27T14:36:00.000-07:00

I posted the following in response to an InsideHigherEd.com article “The Overflowing Composition Classroom.”

It seems that InsideHigherEd is going through their notes from the last CCCC convention, squeezing out an article a day. That’s ok…it gives us bloggers daily content. :)

While the bulk of the comments to this article lament the sad and sorry state of freshman writing skills (which needs to be said again and again), one aspect of the article goes overlooked. Composition courses, even at the CC level, are taught more and more by adjuncts. Adjuncts must, ever increasingly, work at multiple colleges/universities in order to cobble together a living wage.

So, if an adjunct is overloaded at your college, then they are certainly overloaded at her second or even third college. Some may even teach a course or three online, which adds to the total number of students in a given semester.

If you are an admin, this should scare you. You are legally not supposed to ask if she teaches somewhere else, but consider what you pay and realize that she most probably does.

My personal best (which led to severe burn out) was ten courses taught over the length of a winter semester (two sets of three 6 week online courses; a single 5 week online; and three on-ground 16 week). The average student load ranged from 15 (per 6-week online) to 30 (16-week onground). I don’t even want to think of the total numbers of papers graded.

Would I recommend this? No, but it happens and few will talk about it.

Final note: there is software that aids in increasing the time spent grading, allowing more comments per sitting while decreasing the per-paper face time. My blog has one such URL.

SAT writing Section Under Fire.

2007-03-26T16:35:00.000-07:00

The ever handy InsideHigherEd.com in a recent story “Fooling the College Board” took the College Board to task, jumping behind MIT’s Les Perelman’s campaign against the new writing section of the SAT. In doing so, they are committing the same instructional fallacy as Perelman.

A little background: Perelman, director of the WAC program at MIT, reported prepped a test taker (of consenting age, no doubt to report the findings) to present what Perelman has identified as the specific rubric touchstones that would get a high score, but in a factually facetious and logically inconsistent manner. In short, to present an essay that jumps through the hoops, but one that makes little sense.

It seems he succeeded in proving his point but, ultimately, loses his argument.

Let’s start at the CCCC’s. Perelman walks his “exposure” of the faulty SAT method by showing how even a poorly written paper (see here) can pass the writing test. Perelman argues that with a specific structure (5 paragraphs usually), specific word choice (“plethora,” and the like), and a series of specific argumentative tactics (appeal to the arts and/or history, personal encounter with the topic). If taken as a whole, a passable essay will emerge regardless of spelling, grammar, logic or adherence to facts.

Good for Perelman. He has proven, very effectively, that if one writes to a specific writing situation, one can succeed. Which, incidentally, is one measure of writing success. That is, a good, effective writer will write to succeed: in college, in business, in love, etc. If I were writing in a science course at MIT, then certainly my writing techniques would adhere to the rubric (spoken or not) of that environment. The same goes for “passing” the SAT.

What should really be in question is not whether one can rig the writing portion of the SAT (one can, just like one can “prep” for the verbal section by memorizing a list of commonly tested words), but whether colleges should look to another form of measure in picking their incoming class. That is, when much power is given to the test, then much abuse and gaming will follow.

How about some new methods of sifting the high school grads? Phone interview? Mini-academic boot camp where skills are assessed? Or how about some other measure where the potential of a student can be guessed?

Good work Les. Just don’t become the peril-man.

Should teenage girls know about cervical mucas?

2007-03-21T14:47:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned yesterday, LW has been charting her basal temperature for about two years now. During that time, we have been able to visually represent all manner of nifty items (ovulation, thyroid, menses, etc.) that have really aided in her overall health. In short, information is healthy.

Cut to an article in Salon’s Broadsheet yesterday about the “scandal” of teaching teens how to chart their own cycles. As the father of a future teen daughter, I can assure myself that I will encourage a great sense of self-awareness in her about her body. That is, I will encourage her to follow her mother’s lead in understanding her body. If that means checking a first-morning temperature, the location of her cervix and the presence of cervical mucas (which is really obvious when present), then by all means.

Do I think that her having knowledge of her body will allow her to then manipulate the system and “get away” with unprotected sex? No. To do otherwise would be to not instruct her of the rules of the road out of fear of her speeding.

Another banner day in stupid-ville.

[By the way, did you read this because of the blog title?]

These little lives

2007-03-20T06:25:00.001-07:00

There is nothing like a stressful situation to bring out, what I can only surmise, is people's true nature. This is not a good thing.

Not helping an already dour view of my fellow fellow, losing our child recently has prompted some of the most callous and hurtful comments from family and friends. They were trying to help.

"It was meant to be.” Yea, well how bout I punch you in the nose. That was meant to be too.

“It was God’s plan.” Good if you believe in god, not so good if I don’t. Then, you sound like a moron who needs a nose punched. (Apparently I have some lingering anger…)

I guess the ones that get me the most are the ones that need to mitigate the loss for their own reasons: “It has been 7 weeks now…” What am I supposed to say to that? Oh, yea, you’re right. What am I thinking? I have passed the comfortable length of time for grieving, and I am now making you nervous. I am sorry. So insensitive of me. Would you care for a punch in the nose?

Perhaps the most hurtful and nose-needing punched goes along the lines of this: "It wasn't like it was a real baby."

The concept of conception becomes less abstract once there is a pee stick indication. For us, we were going to have a baby. LW was feeling ill, but not as much as before--good sign. LW was getting nauseous around meat--good sign. 12 urine tests indicated positive--good sign. We had been there before. We knew what it all meant. We were guardedly ecstatic.

They say that 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, and that most women just assume a missed or heavy period. I don't know. I do know that LW charts her basal temperature (see related post), and has a very keen insight into when she has been.

So, LW was pregnant, and there was a baby growing inside. I used to be more cavalier about fetuses (feti?). A woman’s choice is her choice, I would say, so she is in charge.

I still believe that. It is, after all, her body. But the tiny little life inside, it seems, has for me been growing in importance. Not to the medical community. We were offered no say in the care of our baby. In fact, the only thing we took away from this was a pathology report. Because the medical-oids defined our baby in a specific way, we lost our say in how to mourn and bury our child. Instead, s/he was sent to a lab to be dissected. No burial, no ceremony, no say. The report indicates “products of conception” present. Doctor-speak is the most callous of all.

But not all have been nose-punch worthy. In fact, some of the most gracious comments come from the most unlikely of places. Our dentist shared her story of her sister’s stillbirth, where our dentist delivered (at a hospital, but no doctor’s were around), and they mourned, cried and buried the child. A recruiter I work for summed it up best (and left us crying) when he said that “these little lives matter.” For us, they certainly do. He was adopted and his mom delivered two stillbirth sisters. He knew intimately.

Are you viral?

2007-02-16T16:33:00.000-08:00

Following a recent story, found here, in InsideHigherEd, I have been thinking a lot about how to teach to the Web 2.0 crowd.

You may know if you read much of my blog that I am a techno geek at heart. I luv me the RSS feeds…

The article linked above talks about a sociology prof whose video about Web 2.0 became “viral,” spreading around the world in just a few days. The author goes on to dream of other teachable videos spreading education and knowledge through this newfangled ‘puter thing.

Perhaps they are partly right. Mostly, though, they are wrong. The video, seen here, is linkable because it is well crafted. While I think it is a bit overdone (HTML did not revolutionize thought—that was done many years ago—see Dada, Warhol, Derrida, etc.), it is well-presented.

The iPod has sold well because it is slick. YouTube and the ilk allow for user contribution…and web 2.0 tauts itself as user controllable. Some of this is true. I move toward that which I can participate in. I like to dabble and play. YouTube, Blogger, etc. all allow me to have an active hand (passive if watching, but then active if responding, commenting, linking, etc.). So, that which allows for action (let’s call actionable items “cool”) gets traction.

I like that. Gives me something to do.

The UofP

2007-02-13T09:48:00.000-08:00

Cross-posted here:

[Dean Dad offered some comments on the UofP. Here is my reply]

I think I can offer a unique comment here. I have worked for the UofP. It was during my furious adjuncting time (10 adjunct classes at three institutions), and the problems go deeper than either the article or Dean Dad describe.

DD offers that the UofP could decrease adjuncting by hiring more full-timers. In order to do so, though, they would have to rewrite their mission. They claim to hire working instructors--the myth of a well-heeled business person teaching one class on the side. In reality, adjuncts are offered multiple sections, which means that they are either working full-time elsewhere and part-time teaching, or slamming together a lot of part-time gigs (my personal favorite).

Then, there is the matter of centralized content. Instructors are required to teach only the material the UofP provides. There is little opportunity for deviation. You are given the readings, rubrics and dates (I was teaching a 5 week, online course). It was Draconian, and I walked away.

So, given that there is only limited amount of opportunity--and that opportunity is itself limited to "facilitating" (their term) their content--then the labor pool available to the UofP shrinks, and the quality of instruction suffers pushing down retention.

It is a vicious cycle that is taking, in my opinion, way too long to complete.

Student Evaluations aren't really the point

2007-01-31T11:35:00.000-08:00

I think that article like this one (and the wonderful comments that follow) point to a more pressing point than mere faculty evaluation...they point to the problem of managing faculty.

When stripped of the academic haughtiness, professors are employed as intellectual workers. They have a commodity that they are selling (or if you prefer they are tradesmen applying their skills). This is neither a complaint nor a criticism. It is just a way of looking at the problem.

The problem is that there is, in the present state, little to no accountability. Whether the topic is evaluations, adjuncts, tenure, etc. the REAL topic is accountability. If a worker is held accountable and how and when...if ever when tenured.

Student evaluations are used by deans as one data point into a class. That is right and good. One should not judge a class on anonymous evaluations, but one can use the aggregate evals to level-set a base-line of feedback over consecutive years. This can then be used to flag deviant semesters. Still good.

BUT, and the adjunct in me gets riled here, when faculty are not held accountable for the base measures of their job, then the entire system is faulty, corrupt and abominable. What are these base measures?

Quality of materials
Time in class
Real availability out of class
Ability to communicate both knowledge and knowledge skills.

The first part of the list is relatively easy to measure. If a college requires (which I think they should) all materials to be accessible online, then a quick look by admin can determine depth and breadth of materials. Does it cover the learning objectives? It is complete?

Time in and out of class is also relatively easy to control. Require profs to post open office hours. Then, have a hired gun (a work study student?) go by to check on posted hours. If no prof is there, check with the department desk. If there is no plausible reason (sick kid, etc.), then a demerit (write up) of some sort that has true consequences—read monetary.

The last item is perhaps the toughest to implement. We all know the best profs/teachers are the ones who are able to transcend the material and present it in a way that “brings it alive.” I think this really means that they are able to communicate skills on how to approach, compile and organize the knowledge. That is, they give the facts as well as the meaning. But, how does one test this?

My undergrad had a method of ensuring a baseline of writing skills. I think it could serve as a model here. Each year at the end of the Fall semester, all of the ENG101 kids would have to write an essay on an established topic (different each year). They were to present an organized, coherent and plausible essay in about two hours. The papers were then read by ALL of the department, each paper getting two readings. If the scores (scale of 1-5) were off by more than one consecutive number (a 4, 6 or a 1, 4 pairing, for example), then the paper would get a third reading without informing the third reader what the previous two scores were. I worked in the department for four years, and I never had a third reading not agree with one of the previous scores.

What the exit test ensured was that all Freshmen would have modicum of writing talent OR they would receive the necessary remediation. Good for the students. It also ensured that all of the faculty contributed to the advancement of student writing (good for the student and the department). And, the time it took to read, once begun, ran faster than one might think. All comp instructors would agree, after a while, you just know where on the scale a piece of writing falls.