Tomorrow's Professor Listserve Archive # 12
Messages 101-110
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Tomorrow's Professor Msg.# 111 GIVING LECTURES THAT ARE EASY TO
OUTLINE
Tomorrows-Professor Msg. #112 KEEPING OUR FACULTIES REPORT
Tomorrow's Professor Msg. #113 INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH: FROM
BELIEF TO REALITY
Tomorrow's Professor Msg. #114 LET ME EDUTAIN YOU
Tomorrow's Professor Msg. #115 THE TOP 100 NEWS STORIES OF THE 20TH CENTURY
Tomorrow's Professor Msg.#116 GRADUATE STUDENT SURVIVAL GUIDE
Tomorrow's Professor Msg. #117 WEB REVIEWING ON INCREASE - JOURNAL EDITORS
CONSIDER INTERNET IMPACT ON PUBLISHING
Tomorrow's Professor Msg. #118 "ALLIANCING" - A NEW WAY TO LOOK
AT ACADEMIC NETWORKING
Tomorrow's Professor Msg. #119 IN PRAISE OF THE RESEARCH UNIVERSITY
Tomorrow's Professor Msg. #120 MAJOR LEARNING THEORIES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
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Tomorrow's Professor Msg.# 111 GIVING LECTURES THAT ARE EASY TO
OUTLINE
Folks:
I am reminded frequently by a number of subscribers of the value they receive from: A Berkeley Compendium of Suggestions for Teaching with Excellence, http://uga.berkeley.edu/sled/compendium/ by Barbara Gross Davis , Lynn Wood , and Robert C. Wilson. Here is an excerpt suggested by one subscriber from Section Seven on Giving Lectures That Are Easy to Outline.
Regards,
Rick Reis
Reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Keeping Our Faculties Report
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GIVING LECTURES THAT ARE EASY TO OUTLINE
Copyright 1983 by the Regents of the University of California
SUGGESTION 38. LET STUDENTS KNOW WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO DISCUSS AND WHY
IF YOU WANT TO:
Give lectures that are easy to outline
State objectives for each class section
Summarize major points
YOU MAY WISH TO CONSIDER:
Beginning each lecture by letting the students know what you are going to talk about and why.
An engineering professor refers to this as his "battle plan." "At the beginning of the hour, I give them a battle plan so they know where the discussion is going and can follow it more easily," he says. "For example, I tell them that I’m going to discuss such-and-such a topic for the first twenty minutes, show them how to use it in the next twenty minutes, and then take questions in the last ten minutes. By laying out exactly what your are going to do, you eliminate a lot of student confusion. You don’t want students spending an hour wondering, ‘why is he talking about that?’ or ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ instead of concentrating on what you have to say."
Many excellent teachers cite the old adage, "Tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em; tell’em; and then tell ‘em what you’ve told ‘em." Although it may appear to be an over simplification in the case of lectures on complex subjects, the general principle is a good one which can be adapted to major topics within a lecture as well as to the overall lecture itself.
SUGGESTION 39. WRITE AN OUTLINE ON THE BLACKBOARD BEFORE YOU BEGIN
IF YOU WANT TO:
Give lectures that are easy to outline
YOU MAY WISH TO CONSIDER:
Writing an outline for your lecture on the blackboard before you begin.
One professor of physiology says that he picked this up from a colleague when they were team-teaching several years ago. "I put the outline of my lecture in the corner of the blackboard when I first come into class," he says. "That way the students can tell at a glance when I’ve shifted topics and where we are in the day’s discussion. I also make frequent reference to the outline to alert students to transitions and the relationships between topics."
SUGGESTION 40. GIVE STUDENTS A LIST OF QUESTIONS
IF YOU WANT TO:
Give lectures that are easy to outline
State objectives for each class section
Give students a conceptual framework for taking notes
YOU MAY WISH TO CONSIDER:
Giving students a list of questions which cover topics to be addressed in your lecture.
One history professor does this routinely. "By outlining my lecture as a series of questions," she explains, "I hope to stimulate the students to think actively during the presentation. The questions are designed to give them a conceptual framework and guide so they can identify where we are and where we are going in the overall discussion."
"I realize that it is difficult for students to listen attentively for a full hour," she says. "Providing them with an outline of the lecture in question format allows them to pick up the thread of the discussion more quickly as their attention fades in and out."
SUGGESTION 41. OUTLINE YOUR LECTURE ON THE BLACKBOARD AS IT DEVELOPS
IF YOU WANT TO:
Give lectures that are easy to outline
Reinforce student learning
Keep yourself from going through the material too rapidly
YOU MAY WISH TO CONSIDER:
Outlining your lecture on the blackboard as it develops.
One professor in the biological sciences says that she always outlines her lectures on the board as she goes along, using colored chalk to differentiate major and subordinate heads or points and to diagram relationships. On a separate section of the blackboard she also writes down any technical terms or names of scientists that the students might not know how to spell.
"The outline serves to reinforce visually what I am saying," she explains. "Furthermore, it makes clear to everyone where we have been and where we are going. An added bonus is that writing the outline on the board as I go along slows down my lecture pace: it serves as an automatic ‘brake’ and keeps me from racing through the material."
"I prefer to use the board as I go along," an engineering professor says. "I think this emphasizes the importance of major ideas better because they are revealed in the context of the discussion."
SUGGESTION 42. STRUCTURE A LECTURE AS YOU WOULD A JOURNAL ARTICLE
IF YOU WANT TO:
Give lectures that are easy to outline
State objectives for each class session
Summarize major points
YOU MAY WISH TO CONSIDER:
Structuring your lectures as you would a journal article.
"Each lecture should have a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end," a professor of history notes. A faculty member in computer science concurs, saying that he prepares his lectures so that they have the oral equivalents of an introduction, headings, subheadings, summary, and conclusion.
"Orally highlighting the structure of a lecture serves the same communication functions as using paragraphs and different type faces in a journal article," he says. "It tells the audience what the topic is, why it is important, what its chief components and their relationships are, and what conclusions we can draw."
"I firmly believe in sharing the structure and reasoning of my lectures with the students," he explains. "I begin each lecture by stating my objectives. For example, ‘Today we are going to discuss X and its effects of Y and Z.’ I make frequent transitional phrases, and I leave time to summarize the major points at the end of the hour."
SUGGESTION 43. USE "CLOSED LISTS" WHENEVER POSSIBLE IN YOUR LECTURES
IF YOU WANT TO:
Give lectures that are easy to outline
Summarize major points
YOU MAY WISH TO CONSIDER:
Using "closed lists" whenever possible in your lectures.
A political science teacher says he makes frequent use of closed lists. "I make a habit of saying things like, ‘There are three main implications of X, number one is...’ or ‘Remember in the last lecture, we were discussing the six principal steps that an administrator goes through when...; these are Number one..., etc.’"
"Closed lists are marvelous," he says. "They are fictional constructs, of course, and this needs to be pointed out to the organizer for the students. Nevertheless, they provide a good advanced organizer for the students.
Closed lists help them both to listen for major points and to take notes. They also provide a very natural bridge or transition mechanism for letting students know when your are changing from one topic to another. Finally, I find that closed lists provide a good structure for summarizing, because they help differentiate between the main points and the detailed examples or digressions."
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Tomorrows-Professor Msg. #112 KEEPING OUR FACULTIES REPORT
Folks:
Below is an excerpt from the recently released report, Keeping our Faculties: Addressing the Recruitment and Retention of Faculty of Color in Higher Education, Executive Summary by Caroline Sotello Viernes Turner, Symposium Coordinator Office of the Associate Vice President for Multicultural and Academic Affairs and Department of Educational Policy and Administration University of Minnesota.
The excerpt deals with recognizing and getting beyond various myths about hiring and promoting faculty of color. Let me know if you would like an e-mail version of the full executive summary which runs about 20 pages.
Regards,
Rick Reis
Reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Interdisciplinary Research: From Belief to Reality
-------------------------865 words ------------------------
KEEPING OUR FACULTIES REPORT
RECOGNIZING AND GETTING BEYOND THE MYTHS
The recruitment and retention of faculty of color remains one of the most difficult challenges facing American higher education. Research findings–whether qualitative or quantitative, whether numerical or narrative–demonstrate that American Indian, African American, Latino, and Asian Pacific American faculty comprise, at most, 10% of the faculty, and many describe experiences of racial and ethnic bias in the workplace. Research findings suggest that there is a need to focus on changing the higher education workplace environment to further embrace the value of a racial and ethnically diverse professoriate in order to sustain the viability, vitality, and growth of our institutions in an ever-changing social environment.
Many symposium participants stressed that one of the most prevalent barriers to progress toward a representative faculty was recognizing and getting beyond myths. Myths act as barriers to progress in hiring and promoting faculty of color. As we learn more about these misperceptions, informing others is one of our important tasks. Continuing to unveil such myths is another way to facilitate the hiring and promotion of faculty of color. Examples of studies presented at the symposium which unveil labor market myths, model minority, and other myths are briefly described here.
1) Labor Market Myths
This body of myths include: institutions cannot compete for doctorates of color who are sought after and offered high salaries; there are no qualified candidates for our faculty position; faculty of color would not want to come to our campus; faculty of color will leave for more money and prestige; recruiting faculty of color takes away opportunities for potential white faculty.
In Achieving Faculty Diversity: Debunking the Myths (1996), Daryl Smith examines the labor market experience of scholars funded by the Ford, Mellon, and Spencer Foundations. She and her colleagues found that only 11% of the scholars of color within the sample of approximately 300 recipients interviewed were "sought after" by institutions of higher education. Other findings emerging from this study include: 1) scientists of color were found in post-doctoral positions and were not being pursued for faculty positions; 2) scholars wanted to work in a wide range of institutional types, although the myth is that they only want to work at prestigious institutions; 3) when faculty of color moved, reasons often focused on unresolved issues with the institution rather than monetary incentives; 4) choices to leave academe were as often a function of the problems with academe as irresistible temptations outside of academe; 5) European-American scholars who were in this study were highly successful in finding faculty positions, dispelling the myth that campuses were only recruiting faculty of color. In his presentation, Samuel L. Myers, Jr. points out that the myth of the revolving door. His study, conducted in the Midwest, suggests that minority faculty may leave their institutions at similar rates when compared to white faculty. The problem is that they are not being hired at the same rate as white faculty.
2) The Model Minority Myth
Shirley Hune and Kenyon Chan (1997) point to a myriad of myths surrounding the "success" of the Asian Pacific American (APA) in academe. They point out that lumping Asian Pacific Americans under one category tends to mask inequities experienced by many in this community. They find low tenure rates, a concentration in non-tenure track positions, and low numbers of Asian Pacific Americans in administration. They report that APA faculty salaries are "generally lower than those of their white counterparts, even when rank and college affiliation are taken into consideration." They also remind us to look at the gender gap for faculty of color by noting that APA women are primarily in the junior faculty ranks while men are primarily in the senior faculty ranks.
3) The Diversity is Only for Minorities Myth
Everyone Benefits Jonathan Alger (1998) and others stressed that diversity is not a minority issue, but an issue that should be of concern to everybody and everyone can benefit from it. For example, Alger stresses that exposure to similarities across racial lines, and differences within racial groups, can overcome learned stereotypes and prejudices.
Corporate Needs and Institutional Viability In her presentation, Mildred Garcia points to the importance of meeting corporate needs as another rationale to support racial and ethnic diversity in higher education. She states that major companies in the corporate world have discovered that diversity is vital to their existence. If the higher education enterprise is to continue to contribute to the world of work, diversity then is an important component. In fact, as discussed by Daryl Smith, the viability of higher education may depend on its ability to meet such needs in the twenty-first century.
4) The Level Playing Field Myth
Countless studies document the added pressures placed on a faculty member of color in a predominantly white environment. Several presenters addressed the high expectations of faculty of color to address minority concerns for their institutions and the stresses of being an "only" on a faculty. Francis Rains, Gloria Cuadraz, Wayne Stein, and Melanie Peterson-Hickey address issues such as biased student evaluations, differential role expectations, and the impact of value conflicts for faculty of color. Sheila Ards examines the effect of race on the tenure and promotion rates for African American faculty.
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Tomorrow's Professor Msg. #113 INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH: FROM
BELIEF TO REALITY
Folks:
Below is an excerpt from an important article on the issue of how to promote more interdisciplinary research. According to the authors, "The history of the federal research enterprise in science, engineering, and technology, the culture of federal research agencies and research universities, and the dominant modes for funding decisions bias the federal support system strongly toward disciplinary research. One result is substantial gaps and missed opportunities in research support. [In the article], examples are provided, and a proposal is offered to strengthen significantly the role of high-quality interdisciplinary research in the nation’s research portfolio."
The authors are Norman Metzger, executive director of the National Research Council Commission on Physical Sciences, and Richard Zare, past chairman of the National Science Board and the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor of Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Stanford University. The article is from Science, Volume 283, Number 5402 Issue of 29 Jan 1999, pp. 642 - 643 ©1999 by The American Association for the Advancement of Science.
A complete copy can be found at: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/283/5402/642. I would also be happy to send you an e-mail version of the article along with some response letters to Science.
Regards,
Rick Reis
Reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Let Me Edutain You
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INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH: FROM BELIEF TO REALITY
Norman Metzger and Richard N. Zare
Interdisciplinary research is a mantra of science policy. Virtually any meeting on the current state and future of science is leavened by obligatory statements about the importance of enabling researchers to work seamlessly across disciplinary boundaries and by solemn declarations that some of most exciting problems in contemporary research span the disciplines. However heartfelt, the nature of the current federal support system–and of the research community–counters these beliefs. Here we briefly discuss the history, structure, and culture that hinder a vigorous national effort in interdisciplinary research, and we conclude by offering a modest remedy.
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Some Solutions
These weaknesses in federal support result, we believe, from narrow perspectives by both agencies and universities derived from the forces we have briefly outlined. There are several ways in which we might attack the issue. But first we must recognize some realities of the current system.
In light of these observations and of the forces that led to them, we believe that a substantial enhancement of interdisciplinary research requires a new program that is owned by several disciplines within an agency or even by several agencies (<#ref4>4). To succeed, this program must have the tacit approval of the apposite congressional committees. Just as critically, it needs the support of the administration and faculties of the research universities, for these institutions in their strong and understandable commitment to disciplinary strength are at the heart of the problem we’ve described. In turn, the program has to demonstrate to the research community that its depth, creativity, and intellectual rigor match that of disciplinary programs. The program would offer long-term support–we suggest 5 years–for interdisciplinary research fellows to work on a number of agreed-to broad themes. Some illustrative but certainly not prescriptive examples of such themes might include (i) fundamental investigations to strengthen environmental sciences; (ii) integration of social and behavioral science research with biological research; (iii) the role of the cognitive sciences in strengthening and making more effective future advances in science and technology; (iv) attacking resource issues, such as fisheries depletion; (v) applying contemporary mathematics to complexity issues in research, especially but not solely in biology; and (vi) combining biocentric activities, such as biophysics, biochemistry, biology, bioengineering, biotechnology, biomedicine, bioinformatics, and so forth.
Brief letter proposals for research programs to address these broad themes would be solicited from the university community. The cooperating agencies would use advisory committees, whose membership would blend disciplines from many fields, with no one discipline dominating, to select the intellectually strongest proposals and would provide major and sustained funding for the work. That funding should support not only the principals but also provide for fellowships for graduate students and support for undergraduate students, as well as the requisite equipment. Some of the funds should also go to the departments themselves, to compensate for the time of the principals that is lost to the department.
To be effective, such a program must be of critical mass. We believe that the program should select 10 interdisciplinary teams every year, with each team given an average of $1.5 million annually for 5 years, with no renewal. Each program should be reviewed after 2 years; if found deficient, it should be terminated, with limited shutdown funds. An average of $1.5 million per year seems reasonable, given that the individual programs will have by definition at least two principal investigators. The total annual cost at a steady state would then be $75 million.
We believe that this relatively modest investment would reap substantial returns in enriching and enlarging the national research enterprise, in directly addressing several national goals, and in creating substantial and healthy changes in the fundamental nature of the research enterprise. In today’s universities, knowledge is typically extracted from an integrated whole by study units, called departments, where that knowledge is disintegrated and disaggregated in a process famous for its turf battles and jurisdictional disputes. The interdisciplinary programs we propose are an attempt to reintegrate this acquisition of knowledge, both its discovery and its dissemination. If such a reintegration of the knowledge process can be accomplished, then the program will have made great strides in redefining the character of the U.S. research university and in preparing our nation to make scientific and technological contributions to solving ever more complex societal problems.
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Tomorrow's Professor Msg. #114 LET ME EDUTAIN YOU
Folks:
Concern about the criteria students use to evaluate a professors’ teaching has increased as faculty seek to experiment with new teaching and learning approaches (often faculty evaluations go down with new approaches). Below is an excerpt from an article by Glenn C. Altschuler, of Cornell University that looks at the emphasis many students put on the entertainment abilities of professors. Let me know if you would like an e-mail copy of the entire article.
Regards,
Rick Reis
Reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: The Top 100 News Stories of The 20th Century
------------------------ 454 words --------------------------
LET ME EDUTAIN YOU
Excerpt from article appearing in The New York Times, Section 4A; Page 50;Column 1; Education Life Supplement Education Life Section, April 4, 1999. Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company. By Glenn C. Altschuler; Glenn C., dean of the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions, and the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies, at Cornell University.
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Perhaps the most disturbing revelation of student evaluations, however, is the extent to which every class has become a show and every instructor a personality. The liveliness of the lectures, the use of videos and the professor’s ability to draw frequent laughs count more than content.
"The professor knows how to teach in an entertaining way (almost like TV)," concluded one admiring student. "The lectures were informative and, most importantly, entertaining," wrote another. I think the students who suggested a laser light show and a warm-up dance before the lesson were kidding, but these days one can never be sure.
At times, evaluations appear to be the academic analogue to "Rate the Record" on Dick Clark’s old "American Bandstand," in which teen-agers said of every new release, "Good beat, great to dance to, I’d give it a 9." Students are becoming more adjectival than analytical, more inclined to take faculty members’ wardrobes and hairstyles into account when sizing them up as educators.
Many teachers share or give in to the attitudes and behavior I have attributed to students. The evaluation form used by the American studies program at Cornell, for example, asks, "How do you feel about your professor?" - not "What do you think of his/her ideas, organization and methods of presentation?" And, let me confess, I make comments in class about my Gucci ties and diminutive height, and I continue to give my 11-word impersonation of Franklin D. Roosevelt ("Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy"), even though I’m irked that students remember it more than my analysis of the achievements and limitations of the New Deal. I like the applause and the large enrollments, and I’m not above a song and dance to keep ‘em in their seats.
Too many students now choose the pleasurable over the valuable. People who exercise vigorously or learn to play a musical instrument, the economist Robert Frank observed in his most recent book, "Luxury Fever," experience discomfort, and even pain, at first. But if they stick with it, enduring satisfaction, to the point of enjoyment, can ensue. Will students and other smart people learn to exchange the satisfaction of the short run for more hard-won pleasures? If not, what will I do for an encore when more undergraduates conclude, as one already has, "I thought he would be funnier than he was"?
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Tomorrow's Professor Msg. #115 THE TOP 100 NEWS STORIES OF THE 20TH CENTURY
Folks:
On the somewhat risky assumption that you have not yet overdosed on all the
century and millennium "look-backs," here is a list of the top 100 news
stories of the 20th century as determined by a survey of 67 AMERICAN
journalist and historians. The survey was conducted by Newseum, a
journalism museum based in Arlington, VA., more information about which can
be found at
http://headlines.yahoo.com/Full_Coverage/World/20th_Century_Top_News_Stories/
The lists reminds me of a survey I encountered some years ago in which journalists were asked to list what they thought would be the most exciting story on which they could ever imagine reporting. The first choice was the Second Coming of Christ and the second choice was the first coming of an alien civilization.
Regards,
Rick Reis
Reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Graduate School Survival Guide
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THE TOP 100 NEWS STORIES OF THE 20TH CENTURY
Copyright 1999 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
Rank Year Headline
1 1945 U.S. drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima, Nagasaki: Japan
surrenders to end World War II
2 1969 American astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first human
to walk on the moon
3 1941 Japan bombs Pearl Harbor: U.S. enters World War II
4 1903 Wilbur and Orville Wright fly the first powered airplane
5 1920 Women win the vote
6 1963 President John F. Kennedy assassinated in Dallas
7 1945 Horrors of Nazi Holocaust, concentration camps exposed
8 1914 World War I begins in Europe
9 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ends "separate but equal"
school segregation
10 1929 U.S. stock market crashes: depression sets in
11 1928 Alexander Fleming discovers the first antibiotic, penicillin
12 1953 Structure of DNA discovered
13 1991 U.S.S.R dissolves, Mikhail Gorbachev resigns: Boris Yeltsin
takes over
14 1974 President Richard M. Nixon resigns after Watergate scandal
15 1939 Germany invades Poland: World War II begins in Europe
16 1917 Russian revolution ends: Communists take over
17 1913 Henry Ford organizes the first major U.S. assembly line to
produce Model T cars
18 1957 Soviets launch Sputnik, first space satellite: space race
begins
19 1905 Albert Einstein presents special theory of relativity:
general relativity theory follows soon after
20 1960 FDA approves birth control pill
21 1953 Dr. Jonas Salk's polio vaccine proven effective in
University of Pittsburgh tests
22 1933 Adolf Hitler named Chancellor of Germany: Nazi Party begins
to seize power
23 1968 Civil rights leader Martin Luther King assassinated in
Memphis, Tenn.
24 1944 D-Day invasion marks the beginning of the end of World War
II in Europe
25 1981 Deadly AIDS disease identified
26 1964 Congress passes landmark Civil Rights Act outlawing segregation
27 1989 Berlin Wall falls as East Germany lifts travel restrictions
28 1939 Television debuts in America at New York World's Fair
29 1949 Mao Tse-tung establishes Peoples Republic of China:
Nationalists flee to Formosa (Taiwan)
30 1927 Charles Lindbergh crosses the Atlantic in first solo flight
31 1977 First mass market personal computers launched
32 1989 World Wide Web revolutionizes the Internet
33 1948 Scientists at Bell Labs invent the transistor
34 1933 FDR launches "New Deal": sweeping federal economic, public
works legislation to combat depression
35 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis threatens World War III
36 1912 'Unsinkable' Titanic, largest man-made structure, sinks
37 1945 Germany surrenders: V.E. Day celebrated
38 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizes abortion
39 1918 World War I ends with Germany's defeat
40 1909 First regular radio broadcasts begin in America
41 1918 Worldwide flu epidemic kills 20 million
42 1946 'ENIAC' becomes world's first computer
43 1941 Regular TV broadcasting begins in the United States
44 1947 Jackie Robinson breaks baseball's color barrier
45 1948 Israel achieves statehood
46 1909 Plastic invented: revolutionizes products, packaging
47 1955 Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott begins after Rosa Parks
refuses to give up her seat to a white person
48 1945 Atomic bomb tested in New Mexico
49 1993 Apartheid ends in South Africa: law to treat races equally
50 1963 Civil rights march converges on Washington, D.C.: Martin
Luther King gives "I Have A Dream" speech
51 1959 American scientists patent the computer chip
52 1901 Marconi transmits radio signal across the Atlantic
53 1998 White House sex scandal leads to impeachment of President
William Jefferson Clinton
54 1947 Sec. of State George Marshall proposes European recovery
program (The Marshall Plan)
55 1968 Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy assassinated in
California
56 1920 U.S. Senate rejects Versailles Treaty, dooms League of Nations
57 1962 Rachel Carson's Silent Spring stimulates environmental
protection movement
58 1964 British rock group The Beatles takes the U.S. by storm
after debut on the Ed Sullivan Show
59 1965 Congress passes Voting Rights Act, outlawing measures used
to suppress minority votes
60 1961 Yuri Gagarin becomes first man in space
61 1941 First jet airplane takes flight
62 1965 U.S. combat troops arrive in South Vietnam, U.S. planes
bomb North Vietnam
63 1975 North Vietnamese forces take over Saigon
64 1942 Manhattan Project begins secret work on atomic bomb; Fermi
triggers first atomic chain reaction
65 1945 Congress passes "GI Bill of Rights" to help veterans
66 1961 Alan Shepard becomes first American in space
67 1973 Watergate scandal engulfs Nixon administration
68 1906 Earthquake hits San Francisco, "Paris of the West" burns
69 1945 United Nations is officially established
70 1961 Communists build wall to divide East and West Berlin
71 1920 Mohandas Gandhi begins leading nonviolent reform movement
in India
72 1911 Standard Oil loses Supreme Court antitrust suit, monopolies
suffer blow
73 1973 U.S. withdraws last ground troops from Vietnam
74 1949 North Atlantic Treaty Organization established
75 1928 Joseph Stalin begins forced modernization of the Soviet
Union; resulting famines claim 25 million
76 1932 Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt beats incumbent President
Herbert Hoover
77 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Soviet Premier, begins era of
"Glasnost"
78 1900 Max Planck proposes quantum theory of energy
79 1997 Scientists clone sheep in Great Britain
80 1956 Congress passes interstate highway bill
81 1914 Panama Canal opens, linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans
82 1963 Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique inaugurates modern
women's rights movement
83 1986 The Space Shuttle Challenger explodes killing crew
including school teacher Christa McAuliffe
84 1950 U.S. sends troops to defend South Korea
85 1968 Violence erupts at Democratic National Convention in Chicago
86 1900 Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams
87 1958 China begins "Great Leap Forward" modernization program,
estimated 20 million die in ensuing famine
88 1917 U.S. enters World War I
89 1927 Babe Ruth hits 60 home runs - a single-season record that
would last for 34 years
90 1962 John Glenn becomes first American to orbit the earth
91 1964 North Vietnamese boats reportedly attack U.S. ships:
Congress passes Gulf of Tonkin resolution
92 1997 Pathfinder lands on Mars, sending back astonishing photos
93 1938 Hitler launches "Kristallnacht," ordering Nazis to commit
acts of violence against German Jews
94 1940 Winston Churchill designated Prime Minister of Great Britain
95 1978 Louise Brown, first "test-tube baby," born healthy
96 1948 Soviets blockade West Berlin: Western allies respond with
massive airlift
97 1975 Bill Gates and Paul Allen start Microsoft Corp. to develop
software for Altair computer
98 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion kills more than 7,000
99 1925 Teacher John Scopes' trial pits creation against evolution
in Tennessee
100 1964 The U.S. Surgeon General warns about smoking-related health
hazards
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Tomorrow's Professor Msg.#116 GRADUATE STUDENT SURVIVAL GUIDE
Folks:
The Stanford University, Graduate School Survival Guide, produced by the
Stanford Medical Informatics unit of the Stanford University Medical
School, provides concise suggestion for:
* Getting the most out of the relationship with your reseach
advisor or boss
* Getting the most out of what you read
* Making continual progress on your research
* Finding a thesis topic or formulating a research plan
* Characteristics to look for in a good advisor, mentor, boss, or
committee member
* Avoiding the research blues.
The full guide can be found at:
http://www-smi.stanford.edu/people/pratt/smi/advice.html
Below is an excerpt from the first two sections listed above.
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Web Reviewing on Increase - Journal Editors Consider Internet
Impact on Publishing
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GRADUATE STUDENT SURVIVAL GUIDE
Getting the most out of the relationship with your reseach advisor or boss
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Getting the most out of what you read
Especially focus on:
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Tomorrow's Professor Msg. #117 WEB REVIEWING ON INCREASE - JOURNAL EDITORS
CONSIDER INTERNET IMPACT ON PUBLISHING
Folks:
The posting below deals with the pros and cons of on-line peer reviewing
for academmic journals. It is by Deborah Roth, from the April 22, 1999, The
Stanford Daily, reprinted by permission.
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Alliancing - A New Way of to Look at Academic Networking
----------------- 495 words ------------------
WEB REVIEWING ON INCREASE - JOURNAL EDITORS CONSIDER INTERNET IMPACT ON
PUBLISHING
By Deborah Roth
Copyright © 1999
The Stanford Daily
No more stuffing photocopies in manila envelopes? No more waiting for "snail mail" to arrive? At Stanford, as elsewhere, editors of academic journals still disagree about just how much the Internet will change academic publishing.
Online peer review is the new concept that allows the editors of academic journals to process submissions more speedily. Stanford Electrical Engineering Prof. Giovanni de Micheli, editor of Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, a journal published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, developed the software that enables online peer review.
Authors from all over the world submit their essays on the Web. Then, reviewers are assigned to each essay. Their comments are also available online. The Internet allows authors, reviewers and editors to engage in constant password-protected exchange.
De Micheli listed the advantages of the new technology. "It takes us now less than three months to edit the journal."
Before the online peer review was adopted, the editing could take up to one year. De Micheli also said, "the evaluations are much fairer, because there is more interaction between the different parties."
"We are much better organized now [the new technology] certainly increases the quality of the journal."
De Micheli predicted that in the coming year most journals published by the IEEE will adopt the online peer review.
Some of De Micheli’s colleagues at Stanford are not as optimistic about the new technology. Economics Prof. Mordecai Kurz said, "I wouldn’t adopt this technology."
Kurz was not enthusiastic about the possible interaction between reviewers and authors.
He explained that he would prefer if the editors could see the reviews before they are made available to the authors.
Nor did Kurz think all that much time would be saved.
"The time of the actual reviewing is much more substantial than the time of mailing . . . and the time of reviewing will remain the same."
Mechanical Engineering Prof. Charles Steele pointed out the technical barriers that might prevent online peer reviewing from being adopted too quickly.
"We have submissions from all over the world . . . . There are too many formats." Authors and reviewers might not have the proper software to read a particular page.
"Some people don’t even have access to e-mail. I don’t know how they will be able to use the Internet," Steele said.
But other Stanford professors and editors have little doubt that the Internet will conquer the realm of academic editing.
"The Web is the natural way of doing it," said Kincho Law, professor of civil and environmental engineering. Although Law suggested that there may be security problems, he considered the online peer review the ‘"technology of the future."
"There is no question that the new technology will come into use," said Linguistics and English Prof. Elizabeth Traugott.
"Our readership [in linguistics] is small, so we probably won’t go as fast, but a great deal is done already electronically . . . we are halfway there," Traugott said.
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Tomorrow's Professor Msg. #118 "ALLIANCING" - A NEW WAY TO LOOK
AT ACADEMIC NETWORKING
Folks:
The excerpt below is from a an excellent article, "Alliances Through Networking: It Is Not Rocket Science," by Jaleh Daie. Although written for a science audience, there is very little in it that does not apply to all areas of academia. The full article appears in, The Scientist, Vol:12, #22, p. 13, November 9, 1998, and can be accessed at: http://www.the-scientist.library.upenn.edu/yr1998/nov/opin_981109.html
Regards,
Rick Reis
Reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: In Praise of the Research University
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"ALLIANCING" - A NEW WAY TO LOOK AT ACADEMIC NETWORKING
Excerpt
By Jaleh Daie
(Copyright © 1998 The Scientist, Inc.)
The truth is that most of us in science and technology feel squeamish about the idea of networking. Yet, knowingly or unknowingly, successful scientists always have been integral parts of several networks. That is how one is invited to give talks, write reviews and articles, or serve on prestigious bodies; it also is how one is nominated for top awards and honors and invited or selected to consider plum assignments and positions. To some, the notion of networking is a bit uncomfortable, but this is because it is misunderstood as exploitative, not mutually beneficial and cooperative. Realistically, networking is a two-way street. It is both collaborative and reciprocal. The main goal of networking should be to develop meaningful relationships that benefit all participants. If that does not happen, the relationships will not manifest as positive forces and will not last.
Networking is about doing unto people as you want them to do unto you. Rather than saying, "How do I get X to do Y for me?", the right attitude is, "How can I help X?" Good and effective networking is about being considerate and courteous to everyone, not just those who are at the top at a given moment.
Networking is work. It is not just a gratuitous concept. It requires time, energy, enthusiasm, sincerity, and consideration. To get a foot in the door, a top education and talent are needed, but moving up is predicated on connections, on people who know that you are a talented performer. When filling positions, it is quite natural for people to look for candidates through their own networks, seeking individuals they know can do the job, or who are able to recommend good people from their own networks.
Networking is about developing communities within which common interests are shared, information is exchanged and shared, and mutual help is given. Your network includes not only your own personal and professional contacts; it extends to those people’s contacts and networks. The novice networker may harbor the misguided notion of having a lot of acquaintances, but real networking is about relationships.
Recently, I’ve been hearing people use the term "alliancing." Although ungrammatical, this word is useful in subtly redefining the concept of networking by emphasizing its strategic side–the building of a few, meaningful, and strong relationships or allies. To have a strong relationship means being able to count on someone, and someone being able to count on you. The main purpose of alliancing is to seek and nurture individuals who can be advisers, sounding boards, intellectual and social resources, role models, mentors, and friends with whom joys and disappointments can be shared.
Alliancing is an effective approach, because the aim is to develop relationships with a few people who can be counted on, rather than simply generating an overflowing Rolodex. Alliancing (or networking, for that matter) is not a numbers game, and should not be about superficial meetings and insincere platitudes. Nor is it about sheer visibility without credibility, which can be deadly to professional goals. One must be willing to consistently deliver what is promised. It is not necessary to do great and significant things to nurture the network. Small things do count. On the other hand, networking is like doing math. A small, early infraction can derail you. To be truly successful, your antennas must be up all the time, but keep in mind that this does not mean being superficially alert. Like many people, I dread the sight of "human butterflies" with nanosecond attention spans, who collect and give tens of business cards during the cocktail hour, or those who offer the NutraSweet version of affection to people they perceive as useful to their agenda. You can get by only so far with charm alone. Then you have to deliver. In fact, few things turn me off more than "professional networkers," who are attentive only to the "powerful and highly placed," but who look past those they do not consider to be important.
Underestimating and disregarding the junior people or those without impressive titles is the hallmark of phonies, and you can spot them from a mile away. This is not to say that, as a rule, touching base with as many people as possible should be avoided. There is a right time, place, and manner in which to do so. But in many situations, it is far more rewarding and enriching to meet a few interesting people, learn what they do, how they do it, and discover if there is a convergence of interests. True and successful networkers treat everybody with sincerity, courtesy, and dignity, knowing that good manners buy good will. People are like the stock market. You never know who will be up and who will be down the next day. Taking the long view, giving everyone her or his due, is the best way to build a real network and to ensure that things will fall in place for you.
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Tomorrow's Professor Msg. #119 IN PRAISE OF THE RESEARCH UNIVERSITY
Folks:
A little over half the faculty and half the undergraduate students in the United States are at Research Universities. The posting below is an excerpt from a very moving commencement speech, In Praise of the Research University, by Professor Harry Mairson, Computer Science, Brandeis University, [mairson@cs.brandeis.edu]. Let me know if you would like an e-mail copy of the entire speech.
Regards,
Rick Reis
Reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Major Learning Theories of the Twentieth Century
--------------------- 1008 words -------------------
IN PRAISE OF THE RESEARCH UNIVERSITY
Excerpt of remarks at the Brandeis commencement, May 1996 School of Science
ceremonies, Professor Harry Mairson
ä..This brings me to the first serious thing I want to say today. What do undergraduates get out of the research university? Among many things, you get to be taught by faculty who, in principle, are doing the same thing that you are doing. How can a faculty member ask an undergraduate to take the risk in learning new things without doing so himself? And since students sometimes fail to learn, faculty have to be willing to run the risk of their own similar failure.
Unfortunately, there are many reasons why faculty do not do research, even at a research university. It is not easy to find something new to do---saying something new about Shakespeare takes ingenuity and nerve. There are personal demands on time and energy---a spouse, children---that may not have existed earlier in one’s career. There is the politics of the job---hustling grant proposals, editorial and committee work, and the like. There are impediments of turf: like gang warfare, research areas are staked out by colleagues whose wrath you risk inciting upon entering their territory, as you challenge their prominence and threaten their grant support. There are tenured faculty who lose interest in the work, but not in the perquisites, and a university job becomes a prestigious backdrop or financial foundation for other ambitions. There is the seduction of teaching. There is burnout: we are not all, to paraphrase Newton, in the prime of our age for invention.
Finally, there is the risk of failure: if you set your sights on something really difficult, you run the risk of screwing up and looking dumb. It is unprofessional, it is shameful, and it hurts: professors are not supposed to look dumb. The anxiety is justifiable. In graduate school, I once cleaned my kitchen floor with a toothbrush rather than face up to my dissertation research. Yet the risk of looking dumb is exactly the risk we ask students to take.
Not that all research is scary, and like a good portfolio manager, you learn to control risk. A balance needs to be struck between barely incremental re-search for things that you, or someone else, already found, and the maddening vertigo of trying something so new that you haven’t the foggiest idea what to do. But a research life---and an academic life---without risk is not worth the effort, and our language abounds with sayings to that effect: a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?
As a professor, if you are going to talk the talk, you have got to walk the walk. Research is just like taking classes, except you make up the syllabus yourself, and the answers to even numbered problems aren’t in the back of the book. As a teacher, one of my responsibilities is to make students realize that their frustration over not understanding and sometimes failing is our jointly suffered occupational hazard. Furthermore, in confronting this frustration, these students confront the limits of the potential and creativity that define them as educated men and women. This, for me, was the moral of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus: for those of us who bear a greater resemblance to Salieri, what can you do with your life that is worthwhile if you are not Mozart?
Teachers who actively participate in research careers have a responsibility to communicate the real excitement of intellectual creation and the birth of new ideas. Some people at this university think that we would be better off as a college, without a research function. Arguments have been made---in the Brandeis Review, even---that there isn’t any interesting or significant research left to be done, but only to throw mud, flowers, or weeds in the crevices of the walls of knowledge. To paraphrase the Sanskritist Richard Gombrich, rarely---mercifully rarely---must I respond to opinions so profoundly orthogonal to my own that truth cannot be reconciled with charity or honesty with politeness. People who don’t believe in the research enterprise ought to visit the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where there is an exhibit of early man-made flints. Apparently, the flint makers from 60,000 years ago knew almost everything there was to know about sharpness, because 30,000 years later, the flints were only a little sharper! To live a university life as if, similarly, everything of significance has already been thought of, strikes me as---well, Neanderthal.
Now if research is indeed the pursuit of true love, why would anyone want to teach? Let me mention one reason that is most relevant to the pursuit of research. In any research enterprise, you want to develop analytic tools and techniques that get to the heart of the matter, and shuck off the irrelevant and the merely technical---even the Neanderthals knew that success depended on having the sharpest tools available. In this spirit, the famous Hungarian mathematican Paul Erdos has spoken of a divine book of knowledge that records the most perfect, revealing, elegant proof of every theorem, and suggested that the challenge to every mathematician is to find out what is in that book. Part of my job is to teach that elegance of thought.
In the introduction to the famous Feynman Lectures on Physics, its editors emphasize the sheer challenge Richard Feynman enjoyed in reformulating complex ideas of physics so that they could be presented to students---the standard by which he measured whether something was really understood. They wrote:
Feynman was once asked by a Caltech faculty member to explain why spin 1/2 particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics. He gauged his audience perfectly and said, "I’ll prepare a freshman lecture on it." But a few days later he returned and said, "You know, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don’t understand it."
Anyone who thinks that excellence in teaching and excellence in research are mutually exclusive is wrong. If the challenge to do both well is indeed a Gordian knot, remember how Alexander the Great resolved the difficulty---sharp tools.
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Tomorrow's Professor Msg. #120 MAJOR LEARNING THEORIES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Folks:
The following abstract, prepared by Vaibhavi Gala of the Stanford Learning Laboratory under the direction of Dr. John Nash, synthesizes research in the field of educational theory and examines the main learning theories of the twentieth century namely, the Information Processing Model, the Response Strengthening Model, Constructivism and Sociocultural theories. Details are presented about the latter two theories including their values and practices, how they address shortcomings observed in earlier theories and the instructional techniques that they advocate. Let me know if you would like a complete copy of the article.
Regards,
Rick Reis
Reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Tactics for Effective Questioning
---------------------- 658 words ---------------------
MAJOR LEARNING THEORIES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Pantel, C. (1997). Educational Theory. A Framework for Comparing Web-Based
Learning Environments.
Chapter 2 of Masters Thesis: Simon Fraser University.
Abstracted by Vaibhavi Gala
copyright ©1999 Board of Trustees Leland Stanford Junior University.
THE RESPONSE STRENGTHENING MODEL, which influenced the first half of this century, lays emphasis on the role of feedback to enhance learning. Knowledge is considered to be the associations people make between stimuli and responses. Drill and practice was the instructional method of choice by the proponents of this theory.
THE INFORMATION PROCESSING MODEL proposes that knowledge is a definite entity that can be transferred from one person to another. This assumption gave rise to didactic instruction and classical instructional design with lecturing as the prevalent instructional technique.
CONSTRUCTIVISM came into light in the early 1980s and proposes that knowledge is ‘constructed’ individually in a person’s mind. Individuals have their own mental framework which is a function of their beliefs, past experiences and knowledge. When a person comes across new information, he understands and assimilates it in the context of his existing mental structures thereby constructing new knowledge. Hence, learning is seen as a process of internal negotiation of meaning.
Under constructivism the goal of instruction is to help learners ‘develop learning and thinking strategies’ and evaluation of learning outcomes consists of ‘determining how the student structures and processes knowledge’. Constuctivism propagates creating a learning environment that facilitates higher-order thinking and metacognition (awareness of one’s own cognitive abilities and the ability to apply them to the task at hand). It shifts cognitive labor such as analysis and synthesis of information from teachers to the learners. Constuctivists advocate that students be allowed and encouraged to take ownership of their learning thus ensuring that learning activities are more authentic and meaningful to them.
Within the constructivist community there seems to be agreement that
constuctivist learning environments are good for advanced knowledge
acquisition. There is no consensus however, on its appropriateness for
lower levels of education, which involve introductory knowledge acquisition
SOCIOCULTURAL THEORIES are rooted in Constuctivism but they focus on the role of community and environment in the creation of knowledge as opposed to the constructivist focus on internal negotiation of meaning. They acquiesce that meaning can vary but contend that it is defined by the community of practitioners which uses it. Thus, knowledge resides in communities. Meaning-making is the result of active participation in socially, culturally, historically, and politically situated contexts. Socioculturalism is more extreme in its beliefs than situated learning in that it focuses on the development of the collective knowledge of a community as opposed to the development of individuals’ knowledge within a community.
Adherents to the sociocultural theories of learning, like constuctivists, argue that it is important to reflect the complexity of the application domain in the learning environment. This would contribute to the authenticity of the learning activities.
Instructional Techniques based on the constuctivist and sociocultural theories include:
a) Scaffolding : Teachers support a learner’s personal construction of knowledge by offering comments, suggestions, feedback or observation
b) Fading: Once the learner progresses towards mastery, teachers remove the supports they provided to make the learner self-sufficient.
c) Cognitive Apprenticeship: Learners learn by actually engaging in the activity they want to learn about with the support of knowledgeable others in the field. (similar to traditional apprenticeships: learning by doing)
d) Collaborative Learning: Learners develop their knowledge by sharing ideas, reflecting and interacting in learning groups.
RELEVANCE
The author provides a reasonable account of the contemporary educational theories of constructivism and socioculturalism (though he has not elaborated on situated learning, a variant of socioculturalism). Understanding the theoretical framework which describes the meaning of knowledge and the process of learning would enable the Learning Lab personnel to form their own informed opinions about the models, reflect on what a learning environment should support and articulate their reasoning for the basis of the various projects. It would also inform the design of the framework for future endeavors.
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