-----------------------------------------------------------------
71 - Generation X vs The Millennial Generation - A More Serious Look
72 - Intellectual Collectives: New Faculty Alliances for Collaborative Learning
73 - Content Tyranny
74 - More Time Needed in Class to Think and Analyze
75 - Write It - Don't Type It
76 - The Next Step: Using the Future to Motivated the Present
77 - The Function of the Dissertation Proposal
78 - An Intellectual Cooperative at Arizona State University
79 - Reimagining Faculty Work
80 - Quotations on Teaching, Learning, and Education
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Tomorrow's Professor Msg. #71 GENERATION X VS THE MILLENNIAL
GENERATION - A MORE SERIOUS LOOK
Folks:
Here are my notes on a recent talk comparing Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980 - fits most graduate students, postdocs, and beginning professors), with The Millennial Generation (born after 1981 and just beginning to enter higher education). The speaker is Dr. Neil Murray, director of career services at the University of California, San Diego. YES, the traits described are generalizations and YES they are based primarily on North American cultures of the time, yet they are worth examining for what they tell us in GENERAL about most of our students and many of colleagues. Let me know if you want a copy of a more complete article on the subject that Murray authored in 1997.
Regards,
Rick Reis
Reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Intellectual Collectives: New Faculty Alliances for
Collaborative
Learning
---------------------- 406 words ------------------
GENERATION X VS THE MILLENNIAL GENERATION - A MORE SERIOUS LOOK
GENERATION X (most graduate students, postdocs, and many assistant
professors):
Lifeline:
* Beat the Pill (first generation to be planned)
* Delivered to dual careerists (parents were first to do this, feeling
their
way along).
* Divided by divorce (divorce rate of parents three times previous
generation)
* The evil child syndrome (Rosemary's Baby most popular move in 1969)
* Classroom crisis (unstructured, free-flowing classrooms, particularly
in
elementary school).
* Weaned on Watergate (cynical)
* Patterns of pathology (drugs, crime)
* Reganomics retrospectively (major shift in wealth from young to old)
* Recessionary realities
* The left out generation (similar to Lost Generation of early 1900's)
Current traits:
* Independent (they were raised this way)
* Pragmatic (want to get to the bottom line)
* Alienated (at least cynical)
* Rogues as heroes (Madonna , Denis Rodman)
* Personal attention please (what they didn't get as a child)
* Now! (when they want it)
* Techno-kids (value and are comfortable with technology)
* Information over introspection (just the facts please)
* Three little words (want work that is interesting, fulfilling, and fun)
* Keeping options open (want choices)
THE MILLENNIAL GENERATION (now under 18 years of age)
Lifeline:
* The child comes with the package (always doing things for the kids)
* Life as an organized activity (always doing things with the kids)
* Omnipresent threats (parents on guard - Internet, AIDS, drugs,
movies,
vacant lots, and even some institutions).
* A topic of discussion (they come first to their parents)
* On center stage (center of attention, even when in groups)
* In the line of fire (parents have very high expectations)
* Long-term plans (get into the right preschool)
* Outside help (any sign of mediocrity is met with help from all sorts
of
experts)
* Well-coached; bred for success (parents highly invested in outcomes).
Traits (what to expect when they enter college):
* Integrated into the system (have not experienced institutional
failure,
are
optimistic)
* Receptive to advise (hard to believe, but true0
* Accomplishing fixed goals (clear notion of what they want to do)
* Taking technology for granted (they expect it, thus faculty get no
points
for providing it)
* Willing to work hard (expect to work more than 40 hrs/wk)
* Little self-reflection (haven't experienced much loss)
* Coaching over counseling (even the best have coaches)
* Re-emergence of the group (groups are the place to shine).
Let me know if you would like a copy of an article by Neil Murray describing all of the above in more detail. ? R. Reis
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Tomorrow's Professor Msg. # 72 INTELLECTUAL COLLECTIVES: NEW
FACULTY ALLIANCES FOR COLLABORATIVE LEARNING
Folks:
Below are the overheads (styles removed) for a talk I will be giving next week at the Frontiers in Education Conference in Tempe, AZ. The talkcenters on an effort at Stanford to create what we are calling Intellectual Collectives: New Faculty Alliances for Collaborative Learning.
We have found at Stanford that the phrase, "If Only Stanford Knew What Stanford Knew," (you can substitute any other university for Stanford), captures nicely the fact that valuable intelligence is being lost by both faculty and student failure to learn more adequately from each other. What is needed is a mechanism and structure for allowing the institution to learn from its own experience so that there is a gain for both individual and organizational learning. By facilitating the creation of these "intellectual collectives", it is our hypothesis that faculty, in spite of the constraints of time and professional duties, will become more accomplished teachers and scholars while also enhancing the learning of their students.
To test the above assumption we are proposing a series of experiments over the next three years covering a range of faculty issues and interests through which we hope to answer fundamental questions on the nature and effectiveness of such alliances.
Your thoughts and comments are most welcome. Let me know if you would like a copy of the complete paper.
Regards,
Rick Reis
Reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Content Tyranny
------------------------ 970 w0rds -----------------------
INTELLECTUAL COLLECTIVES: NEW FACULTY ALLIANCES FOR COLLABORATIVE LEARNING
A work in progress presented to the:
Frontiers in Education Conference
Tempe, AZ
November 5, 1998
Richard M. Reis
The Stanford Learning Laboratory
Stanford University
Reis@cdr.stanford.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"If Only Stanford Knew What Stanford Knew"
The Professor's Dilemma
The Intellectual Collectives Initiative
Five Proposed Experiments
The Social Knowledge Network - A New Kind of Multimedia
Database
Key Research Questions
Next Steps
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"If Only Stanford Knew What Stanford Knew"
Valuable intelligence is being lost by the failure of both faculty and
students to see themselves as part of an institution-wide learning
community.
A mechanism is needed for allowing the institution to learn from its own
experience so that there is a gain for both individual and organizational
learning. Through such a mechanism, faculty, in spite of the constraints
of time and professional duties, can become more accomplished teachers
and scholars, can enhance the learning of all their students, and can
achieve
a greater balance in their personal and professional live
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Professor's Dilemma
"First-class research - writing proposals and doing the things necessary to get them funded, supervising graduate students, attending and presenting at conferences, writing papers, and actually planning and carrying out the research - is a full-time job."
"First-class teaching - planning and updating lessons, creating appropriate challenging but fair homework assignments and examinations, learning about,. importing, and implementing new instructional methods and materials, doing classroom research and curriculum development and presenting and publishing the results, and dealing with the myriad of problems that students routinely present (classroom management, cheating, emotional problems, etc.) - is also a full-time job.
"There is a limit to how many full-time jobs one individual can hold down!"
Richard Felder, professor of chemical engineering, North Carolina State University
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Problem
Today's faculty are under increasing pressure to:
Show greater productivity and relevance in their research
Significantly improve the learning of ALL their students
Better serve their institution and their profession
Seek a more appropriate balance in their personal and
professional
lives.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Intellectual Collectives Initiative
Creating new and innovative faculty alliances that:
Encourage the expansion of scholarly efforts to integrate teaching, learning, research, and service in new and innovative ways,
Increase learning across the undergraduate, graduate, postdoc, and faculty spectrum,
Leverage creativity, time, and effort through the sharing of "intellectual capital," while preserving the intellectual contributions of each participant,
Enable participants to identify each other, work together, sustain their activities, preserve their work, and leverage their outcomes for individual and institutional benefit.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In all Intellectual Collectives experiments:
New intellectual communities are the primary focus,
Faculty and student learning through collaboration is the common theme,
Sustainability of innovation is the major challenge,
Identification of common methodologies is the central activity,
Reaching across departments and/or schools, as well as to other
institutions, is the general expectation,
The sharing of intellectual capital is the paramount issue,
Building "integrated learning networks" is the ultimate goal,
Effective evaluation, implementation, and dissemination of
results
is the essential outcome.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Five Proposed Experiments:
(1) Collaboration Across Disciplines Through The Modernist World
Database
Project :
(Faculty and graduate and undergraduate students in Palo Alto and at
Stanford's overseas campuses explore interactive teaching and research
activities focusing new ways of analyzing the relationship among
documents,
forms of art, ways of meaning, facts, and history.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(2) Service-Learning Through A New Component in Curriculum Development:
(Focuses on three groups of faculty engaged in service learning development. One group concentrates on "ethics in society," one on developing a "gateway course," to serve as a preparation for service-learning in various departments and programs, and one on designing a sequenced service-learning curriculum centered on the arts as a form of community development.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(3) New Teaching and Research Linkages Through The Integration of Learning:
(Creates a greater teaching/research synergy at Stanford by exploring
ways to connect learning across the entire undergraduate, graduate,
postdoc,
and faculty spectrum.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(4) Future Faculty Preparation Through Broader Roles for Teaching Assistants:
(Increases the content development role of teaching assistants
throughout
the university via the expansion of the new "enhanced teaching
materials development" program now underway in the Stanford electrical
and mechanical engineering departments.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(5) Junior Faculty Development Through New Social and Professional Networks:
(Explores various mechanisms and venues for bringing groups of junior faculty together to overcome social and intellectual isolation that can be damaging in the early stages of an academic career (before they've developed the necessary compensatory mechanisms).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Social Knowledge Network - A Special Kind of Multimedia Database
At the backbone and support structure for the Intellectual Collectives initiative will be the Stanford Social Knowledge Network (SKN), a World-Wide-Web based knowledge management system being developed at Stanford that will enable around-the-clock and around-the-world access by intellectual collectives assembled to pursue a common interest. It would provide a way for members of the intellectual collectives to review specific information of interest to the community while also fostering the sharing of ideas, experiences, and resources.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Key Research Questions:
How are intellectual collectives formed, nurtured, sustained, and evaluated?
How will participation in such collectives impact retention, tenure and promotion?
Why types of infrastructure are needed to support such initiatives?
How do we evaluate, implement, and disseminate the results of these experiments?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Next Steps
Establish criteria for assessing the outcomes of each experiment.
Establish the proper balance among the various experiments with regard to question asked and issues investigated.
Establish procedures for linking the criteria, tools, techniques insights, and outcomes of individual experiments to the common research questions, themes, and goals of the overall IC.
Develop a robust methodology for establishing new intellectual collectives that that can be extended across Stanford and also exported to other institutions.
Establish mechanisms for handing-off successful experiments to
otheruniversity
organizations for long-term support.
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Tomorrow*s Professor Msg. #73 CONTENT TYRANNY
Folks:
The posting below is from a column on teaching by Phillip Wankat and
Frank
Oreovicz in the October, 1998 issue of Prism magazine (vol. 8, no.
2,
p.15). Wanket and Oreovicz are well know to many engineering
faculty from
their book, Teaching Engineering (McGraw-Hill, 1993). They are perhaps
less
familiar to science graduate students, postdocs, and faculty, although
much
of what they have to say applies to these fields as well. This
article
offers practical advice on a core issue facing every professor.
Regards,
Rick Reis
Reis@cdr.sanford.edu
UP NEXT: Write It - Don't Type It
----------- 567 words ----------
CONTENT TYRANNY
Does the content tyrant rule your classroom? If you say, "I can't do that; I have to cover the content," every time a colleague offers a suggestion about how to improve your teaching, there's a good chance it does.
Content tyranny exists when the need to cover material rather than to encourage student learning dominates educators' teaching and testing styles. This dominance causes a variety of problems. For example, every professor knows that if you try to cover too many topics in a lecture, it goes sour. If you add one too many problems to an exam, the class average and student morale plummet.
In Improving Your Classroom Teaching (Sage Publications, 1993) author Maryellen Weimer discusses three myths that contribute to content tyranny: 1) more is better; 2) we teach content-not students; and 3) if you know it, you can teach it. Collectively, these myths lead to the incorrect proposition that a good course must be absolutely packed with content.
In our experience, professors need to cover five types of information in class:
* key points and general themes
* especially difficult material
* material not covered elsewhere
* examples and illustrations
* material of high interest to students.
Once they move beyond these categories, however, educators run the risk of falling prey to content tyranny. Here are several strategies for avoiding the trap:
1. Omit material. A recent topic analysis of chemical engineering
separations
classes at four universities showed a content overlap of 61 percent.
Clearly,
some material could be removed from each of these classes. When deciding
what to cut, start with obsolete information (even if some consider it
"traditional") and material the textbook covers well.
And unless it's extremely pertinent to the course, don't cover
your own research. Removing excessive content has the added benefit of
creating more classroom time for active learning exercises that increase
student understanding, such as group activities and one-minute quizzes.
2. Expect students to get more from readings and homework. Most educators agree that students are responsible for learning. Encouraging them to learn more outside the classroom can help alleviate content tyranny in the classroom. Ways to accomplish this include developing some course objectives that embrace material covered only in readings, and designing homework and test problems addressing these objectives. Remember to inform students about what you are doing before they take the first exam so that they will be sure to devote the proper time and attention to reading assignments.
3. Evaluate Exams. Content tyranny often leads to problematic tests. If students constantly complain about your exams, ask several colleagues to take one. If they need an entire class period to finish it, the exam is too long. In redesigning the test, cover less material, but cover it deeply, using novel problems. Students who truly understand the material (and have not merely memorized it) should be able to finish the test.
The hard part of teaching is not getting students to learn content;
the hard part is getting them to learn how to learn and generate creative
solutions. According to one estimate, 80 percent of the technical material
engineers will use during their careers they will not have learned in
school.
A truly good course covers necessary content, but most importantly offers
educators the opportunity to teach students how to use that content to
solve novel problems, develop innovative designs, think critically, and
evaluate options.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip Wankat is a chemical engineering professor at Purdue
University;
Frank Oreovicz is an education communications specialist at Purdue's
chemical
engineering school. The authors welcome readers' feedback. You can reach
them via e-mail at wankat@ecn.purdue.edu and oreovicz@ecn.purdue.edu.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tomorrow*s Professor Msg. # 74 MORE TIME NEEDED IN CLASS TO THINK AND
ANALYZE
Folks:
Below is a thoughtful response from Michael Fried, professor of mathematics at U.C. Irvine, to the previous posting on content tyranny by Philip Wankat and Frank Oreovicz. I*ve always felt we need to be much clearer with our students as to what we plan to do, and not do, in class and what we expect them to do outside of class on their own, in groups, and in discussion sessions. Your thoughts are always welcome.
Rick Reis
Reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Write It, Don*t Type It
----------------------------- 431 words ----------------------------
MORE TIME NEEDED IN CLASS TO THINK AND ANALYZE
The article by Wankat and Oreovicz (CONTENT TYRANNY ? Msg. # 73) encapsulates nicely my main indictment of present teaching over the last 30 years. I agree with the authors that students are inundated with content and as a result are left to do the hardest work on their own: problem analysis, while classes, even from the most enlightened lecturers tend to place book material on the board.
Insistence that CERTAIN material be covered, often ends up meaning that ALL MATERIAL in a syllabus must be covered, and at a pace that strikes one as mindless. There is, however, a problem not hinted at by the article. It is that the tyranny of the book extends to students: they can't seem to stop themselves from trying to master the overload of topics in the text. Of course, with so many disparate topics, so little connection between the topics, and so few standards for mastery, students just can't do it.
A secret ingredient to getting more efficiency into classes is to recognize that no one class exists in isolation. Without problem analysis time, for example, students will not recognize when two very difficult courses are essentially the same. This failure is what happens for students who take two of the undergraduate curriculum's most difficult courses: Vector Calculus (mathematics) and Electricity and Magnetism (physics). The fact that these courses use different notation---mostly the result of one naming the variables differently---plays into a superficial interpretation of the material. The result is that both classes inundate the students with material. Any real improvements for students will require institutional insights that cross the course barriers.
I admired the article by Wankat and Oreovicz*s immensely, and think their issues are at the heart of what must be considered for institutional change with respect to the significance of teaching. In particular, these issues were the bone of contention in what I wrote recently to a person at U.C. Berkeley who has now been installed as the head of a statewide funding effort called the California Mathematics Project. His view is simply: "students need to work harder." My contention is that without analysis time---at a pace below the pressure of mere note taking on the students' part --- students simply won*t know what to work harder on! Our students at U.C. Irvine, for example, report almost no problem solving experiences in their backgrounds. So, they have almost no independent problem solving skills when they get here. They aren't going to get them here either because of the inundation of material that seems to be an institutional pattern.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tomorrow's Professor Msg. # 75 WRITE IT, DON'T TYPE IT
Folks:
I normally don't post messages with a purely technical content,
however,
this one clearly has implications for education as well as for
practically
everything else. A similar device was demonstrated at a recent
Computer
Human Interaction (CHI) meeting. In the one I saw, you could
go so far as
to draw a box on a piece of paper and then inside the box draw the
numbers
and other indicators (+,-, x, =, and so on) as seen on a typical
calculator. Then, by touching the numbers and corresponding
operations
on
the paper, the pen would actually do the calculations and display the
results in a small LED screen on its side!
Regards,
Rick Reis
Reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: The Next Step: using the Future to Motivate the Present
----------------------- 349 words ----------------------
WRITE IT, DON'T TYPE IT
Wired News Report, 9 October, 1998
Researchers in Britain have based a cutting-edge device on an
old-fashioned
idea: the pen. The SmartQuill input pen, under development at
British
Telecommunications, is a new tool for generating text and inputting
it into
any computer device. As users write on a piece of paper with
the
SmartQuill, a spatial-sensing device inside the pen detects the
letterforms
of the pen's movement and converts them into text. That text can then
be
transmitted to any computer device. When the user inserts the
pen into an
electronic inkwell, text data is transmitted to a desktop computer,
printer, or modem or to a mobile telephone to send files
electronically.
The data can also be read on a tiny screen on the side of the pen and
used
with personal information-management software, email, and other
applications that will be built in. The patented SmartQuill is a
little
bigger than a fountain pen and can read the owner's handwriting, said
officials at British Telecom, based in Surrey, England.
British Telecom saw a need for input devices smaller than keyboards,
since
the miniature keyboards and screens of current handheld devices make
typing
and reading text difficult.
"We are aiming at the mobile environment," said research engineer Roger
Payne. "As more and more people are working out of the office and
rather
than lugging around huge laptop computers, we're using something
people
are
much more comfortable with -- writing." SmartQuill works by
measuring
the
pen's movements and matching them to the movements that produce
letters
and
words programmed into its memory. It's similar to the way a microphone
detects sound. Consistency of handwriting, rather than neatness, is
the
only condition for accuracy, Payne said.
A prototype for SmartQuill, which could be on the market in two years,
could eventually add a telescopic virtual screen. A user would peer
through
the end of the pen and see the impression of a full-sized screen, he
said.
The pen's tilt sensor could also be used to control the cursor on a
computer screen.
Note: Reuters contributed to this report.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tomorrow*s Professor Msg. #76 THE NEXT STEP: USING THE FUTURE TO MOTIVATE THE PRESENT
Folks:
Here is an interesting message from Eric Fairfield, president,
Fairfield
Enterprises on how he, his students, and his employees make use of
the
"next -stage" approach described in Msg. #59, "The Next-Stage Approach
to
Preparing for an Academic Career.
Regards,
Rick Reis
Reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: The Function of the Dissertation Proposal
---------------------------------- 562 words --------------------------
THE NEXT STEP: USING
THE FUTURE TO MOTIVATE THE PRESENT
I have found that, for me and for my students, looking at the future
3 - 5
years out makes it easier to decide what to do in the present.
I began doing this "next-stage" looking seriously when I was a graduate
student. I asked myself what I wanted to do after I got my
Ph.D.,
and the
answer was high quality research and teaching at a good
university.
To get
to a good university, I had to do a high quality thesis project and
then do
an excellent job with a post doctoral fellowship.
Knowing what these next few steps were made it easier to make choices
and
to work a little harder even when I did not want to. "Should
I take
German, become a teaching assistant, repeat this experiment, reread
this
manuscript again, and so on?"
As a professor, I realized that many of my students worked below their
capability, because, I believe, many of them did not have future
images
of
themselves as degreed scientists working at a job they liked.
So I had
them visualize a real job that they liked and ask themselves, "What
skills
would it take for me to be good enough to get such as job?" The
answers
were, of course, different for each student; yet having the answers
in mind
got them to work better on current tasks and to order the tasks well
for
themselves.
When I was a professor, I asked "What will life be like after I get
tenure
and is it life I want?" At the time, the future seemed to
consist
of
endless grant writing for little money and never enough people and
equipment to do the multidisciplinary research that I liked the
best.
It
also seemed that becoming better teacher would not be rewarded in the
way I
would hope. Analysis of the next stage told me it was time to consider
other possibilities.
Now I run a small company that makes biomedical instruments and
software
and does consulting. I am actually teaching constantly, sometimes the
audience is a few people, sometimes it is hundreds. Topics range from
laser
physics and molecular biology through return on investment and
strategies
for intellectual property. Still, it is teaching because the
object is to
present a well understood topic clearly and effectively to
others.
The
better a teacher I am, the more I feel rewarded. I am also an adjunct
professor and teach various graduate science or business courses when
possible. It is often tiring and difficult but it fits my skills
well. I
have projected what this job will become in 3, 5 and 10 years.
And I like
what I see.
I expect employees to do their own "next-stage" projections as
well.
With
such projections, together we can determine a career path, the skills
needed along the way, and how to enjoy the journey as much as we
can.
For
instance, many employees come with physical science or engineering
skills
but want to learn a lot of biology or biophysics. We plan the
next stages
so that they learn and the company benefits. The planning must
be done
carefully if the employee effectively changes fields.
My "next-stage" approach may not fit everyone, but for me and my
students
(informal and formal ), such analysis works quite well indeed!
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Tomorrow*s Professor Msg. #77 THE FUNCTION OF THE DISSERTATION PROPOSAL
Folks:
Whether or not your department requires you to submit a dissertation
proposal, if you are a Ph.D. student you should seriously consider
doing so. The work you put into such a proposal will redound to your
benefit many times
over once you begin working on your dissertation. The written
(and
approved) proposal is also a way of setting expectations for both you
and
your advisor(s) in advance of what is a major research
undertaking.
Below
is an excerpt on the functions of the dissertation proposal taken from
an
excellent book, Proposals That Work: A Guide for Planning
Dissertations
and
Grant Proposals, by Lawerence F. Locke, Waneen Wyrick Spirduso, and
Stephen
J. Silverman, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA, 3rd editon, 1993
pp 3-5.
Regards,
Rick Reis
Reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: An Intellectual Cooperative at ASU
------------------------------
518 words ------------------------
THE FUNCTION OF THE DISSERTATION PROPOSAL
A [dissertation] proposal sets forth both the exact nature of the
matter
to
be investigated and a detailed account of the methods to be employed.
In
addition, the proposal usually contains material supporting the
importance
of the topic selected and the appropriateness of the research methods
to be
employed.
A [dissertation] proposal functions in at least three ways: as a means
of
communication, as a plan, and as a contract.
Communication:
The proposal serves to communicate the investigator's research plans
to
those who provide consultation, give consent, or disburse funds. The
document is the primary source on which the graduate student's thesis
or
dissertation committee must base the functions of review,
consultation,
and, more important, approval for implementation of the research
project.
It also serves a similar function for persons holding the purse
strings
of
foundations or governmental funding agencies. The quality of
assistance,
the economy of consultation, and the probability of financial support,
will
all depend directly on the clarity and thoroughness of the proposal.
Plan:
The proposal serves as a plan for action. All empirical research
consists
of careful, systematic, and pre-planned observations of some
restricted
set
of phenomena. The acceptability of results is judged exclusively in
terms
of the adequacy of the methods employed in making, recording, and
interpreting the planned observations. Accordingly, the plan for
observation, with its supporting arguments and explications, is the
basis
on which the thesis, dissertation, or research report will be judged.
The research report can be no better than the plan of investigation.
Hence,
an adequate proposal sets forth the plan in step-by-step detail. The
existence of a detailed plan that incorporates the most careful
anticipation of problems to be confronted and contingent courses of
action
is the most powerful insurance against oversight or ill-considered
choices
during the execution phase of the investigation. The hallmark of a
good
proposal is a level of thoroughness and detail sufficient to permit
another
investigator to replicate the study, that is, to perform the same
planned
observation with results not substantially different from those the
author
might obtain.
Contract:
A completed proposal, approved for execution and signed by all members
of
the sponsoring committee, constitutes a bond of agreement between the
student and the advisors. An approved grant proposal results in a
contract
between the investigator (and often the university) and a funding
source.
The approved proposal describes a study that if conducted competently
and
completely should provide the basis for a report that would meet all
the
standards for acceptability. Accordingly, once the contract has been
made,
all but minor changes should occur only when arguments can be made
for
absolute necessity or compelling desirability.
With the exception of plans for qualitative research, proposals for
theses
and dissertations should be in final form prior to the collection of
data.
Under most circumstances, substantial revisions should be made only
with
the explicit consent of the full committee. Once the document is
approved
in final form, neither the student nor the sponsoring faculty members
should be free to alter the fundamental terms of the contract by
unilateral
action.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Tomorrow*s Professor Msg. #78 AN INTELLECTUAL COOPERATIVE AAT ARIZONA
STATE UNIVERSITY
Folks:
Below is a message from Professor Mark Henderson at Arizona State University in response to Msg. # 72, Intellectual Collectives: New Faculty Alliances for Collaborative Learning (10/29/98). Mark describes a very interesting form of such a collective and some of the important factors impacting its success. Be sure to check out the website at ttp://prism.asu.edu.
Regards,
Rick Reis
Reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Reimagining Faculty Work
--------------------- 413 words ----------------------
AN INTELLECTUAL COOPERATIVE AAT ARIZONA STATE
UNIVERSITY
Arizona State University has approached the Intellectual Cooperative idea from the standpoint of common research interests, hoping that as a result teaching and research will blossom. We have made some pretty good headway with PRISM (Partnership for Research In Stereo Modeling) (http://prism.asu.edu). We began the program three years ago as a collaboration among five colleges: Engineering, Architecture, Fine Arts, Liberal Arts and Sciences and Business; obviously a quite diverse group. When we mentioned that we would like to gather folks together who like to create and make 3-D objects, the faculty came out of the woodwork. Now we have underway 15 interdisciplinary projects and two courses based on 3-D geometric modeling and visualization, and rapid prototyping. On January 1, 1999, we will "cut the ribbon" on a university-industry consortium in rapid fabrication as part of this same effort.
We have achieved some success, however, not as much as we would like. The positive key so far has been to select a topic which is of interest to a multitude of people who otherwise would never talk to each other. As it stands now, we have artists doing engineering and numerical controlled machining, engineers doing sculpture and metal foundry casting in fine arts and a lot of things in between.
A complication that we need to deal with is the fact that the various colleges are spread out across the campus. This dispersion can be a problem because people can stay in their own enclaves. As one possible solution, we are constructing a satellite laboratory in fine arts to complement the one in engineering. We are going to keep track of the situation, and if necessary make some adjustments so we don't end up jeopardizing the diversity of communication.
Please feel free to cruise our web site and let us know what you think. Of course, we don't want to limit our collaboration just to ASU so we are open to members outside of the University and even Arizona. Dr. Anshuman Razdan (razdan@asu.edu) is the Technical Director, supported at the Vice Provost level of the university so that PRISM can maintain a neutral association with the different colleges. That has turned out to be another key to our success. As these projects become more successful we have found that some the colleges want to absorb or "own" the effort and with this provost level support I think all colleges feel comfortable that the collaboration will continue.
Mark Henderson
Co-Director, Engineering
PRISM
Arizona State University
mark.henderson@asu.edu
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Tomorrow*s Professor Msg. #79 REIMAGINING FACULTY WORK
Folks:
Below is my edited version of a summary prepared by James Yao of Texas
A&M
University, of an article by J. P. Bean, "Alternative Models of
Professional Roles: New Languages to Reimagine Faculty Work," The
Journal
of Higher Education, Vol. 69, No. 5,September/October 1998, pp.
496-512.
While you probably won't agree with all the comments, they do give
us
something to consider as we rethink faculty work roles in the coming
decade.
Regards,
Rick Reis
Reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Quotations on Teaching, Learning, and Education
---------------- 737 words----------------
REIMAGINING
FACULTY WORK
Quantity over Quality
"... the language currently used at research universities to describe
faculty work is constraining regardless of its source. It emphasizes
quantity as opposed to quality, extrinsic as opposed to intrinsic
characteristics of work, a lack of trust of faculty members, and an
emphasis on the procurement of resources."
Research Hegemony
"Once, the undergraduate curriculum held the faculty together: we
taught
and students learned, and that was our main engagement. After the
success
of the Manhattan Project and other uses of science in World War II,
the
research hegemony arose. Undergraduates, once the chief focus of
faculty
attention, became fodder for the graduate research enterprise;
universities
became not just big business, but big businesses."
The Language of Higher Education
" How do we talk about higher education now? This the language I hear:
efficiency, productivity, technology, credit hours generated, grants
with
overhead received, accountability, assessment, competition, costs,
total
quality management. This is not the language of education or morality
or
scholarship or learning or community; it is the language of counting,
accountants, accountability and, to a greater or lesser extent, it
is how
we imagine our enterprise. ... There is pressure to increase the size
of
classes, whether learning is improved for students or not, and
pressure
to
increase the scale of funded research, whether the research is driven
by
need for knowledge or not. ... There are pressures to forego research
that
might take several years to complete in favor of scholarship that
becomes
trivial as faculty search for the smallest publishable unit on the
shortest
possible timeline."
Extrinsic vs Intrinsic Rewards
" ... We are role models for students not only as professionals but
also as
human beings. It is unlikely that any new definition of faculty work
can
ignore students. ... One should work for the development of one's
discipline, or one's self, or of knowledge and expression. ..
"When our extrinsic rewards are high, we have won the game of
evaluation,
but we may or may not have served ourselves, our disciplines, or our
students. The primary extrinsic rewards for faculty are salary and
promotion. ... To endorse materialism, to teach our students this
value
through our example, to export this value through international
students
around the world, raises the specter of sustainability. ..."
Rampant Workaholism
"Perhaps the greatest danger to faculty members is that the definition
of
their roles will endorse workaholism as a virtue. ... First and
foremost
workaholism is a pathology, not a virtue, even if it is rewarded and
even
if it is a norm. A person addicted to the process of work is out of
control.
"Addiction relies on processes such as the promise, which takes a
person
out of the present time into the future. ... Another process is
external
referencing, in which one's sense of self is developed outside
oneself.
Faculty members often depend on external references, like the editors
of
refereed journals, to assess their worth as scholars. A third process
is
invalidation. Here the addict defines into nonexistence ideas that
she or
he doesn't like or can't control. ... Hard work is to be admired;
workaholism is not. .
"Three desirable things to consider in a new definition of faculty
roles
are to be true to ourselves, to value students, and work for intrinsic
reasons. Simultaneously, we should avoid externally defined roles,
the
primacy of extrinsic rewards, and workaholism. ... It is time to move
beyond the language of counting and accountability and consider
describing
faculty work in new languages. ..."
Reimagining Our Work
"Utopian societies fail, but utopian ideals can be guides, reminders
of our
potential. It is not realistic in this society to ignore what
accountants
say, else your account becomes empty. ... When one's work is more
influenced by the potential to increase income than by disciplinary
needs,
something is amiss. ... There is little doubt in my mind that if such
a
university existed, the best faculty and the best students would flock
to
it. As a result, it would become one of the wealthiest and most
productive
institutions.
"It is time that we take responsibility for our own work, define our
role
broadly, and contribute to the society that supports us. Although we
are
not likely to escape public scrutiny, only if we are accountable to
ourselves can we accountable to the public. Only if we reimagine our
work,
can we serve the soul of the world."
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Tomorrow*s Professor Msg. #80 QUOTATIONS ON TEACHING, LEARNING, AND
EDUCATION
Folks:
The National Teaching and Learning Forum (NTLF) is worth checking out
at:
http://www.ntlf.com. Among the many interesting items on its
web site is
an extensive listing of quotations on teaching, learning, and
education.
Below are 15 of my favorites chosen from the list. Complete
citations
can
be found at the web site.
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@cdr.stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Student Evaluations: Gender Bias and Teaching Styles
-------------------------- 532 words
----------------------
QUOTATIONS ON
TEACHING, LEARNING, AND EDUCATION
ON TEACHING
* The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate "apparently
ordinary"
people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying
winners:
it is in making winners out of ordinary people. K. Patricia
Cross
* We teach what we like to learn and the reason many people go into
teaching is vicariously to reexperience the primary joy experienced
the
first time they learned something they loved. Stephen Brookfield
* The teachers who get "burned out" are not the ones who are constantly
learning, which can be exhilarating, but those who feel they must stay
in
control and ahead of the students at all times. Frank Smith
* At present the universities are as uncongenial to teaching as the
Mojave
Desert to a clutch of Druid priests. If you want to restore a
Druid
priesthood, you cannot do it by offering prizes for Druid-of-the Year.
If
you want Druids, you must grow forests. W. Arrowsmith,
* Setting an example is not the main means of influencing another, it
is
the only means. Albert Einstein
* Teachers affect eternity because they never know where their
influence
will stop. Mitch Albom
regan@cdr, schansen@sima, reis@cdr, Carolyn.ybarra@stanford.edu,
mills@cdr,
cahlene@Leland.Stanford.EDU
ON LEARNING
* Where I grew up, learning was a collective activity. But when I got
to
school and tried to share learning with other students that was called
cheating. The curriculum sent the clear message to me that learning
was a
highly individualistic, almost secretive, endeavor. My working class
experience . . . was disparaged. Henry A Giroux
*Learning is not so much an additive process, with new learning simply
piling up on top of existing knowledge, as it is an active, dynamic
process
in which the connections are constantly changing and the structure
reformatted. K. Patricia Cross
* Sometimes the last thing learners need is for their preferred
learning
style to be affirmed. Agreeing to let people learn only in a way that
feels
comfortable and familiar can restrict seriously their chance for
development. Steven Brookfield
* Memorization is what we resort to when what we are learning makes
no
sense. Anonymous
* Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer
an
injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they
are
aware of their own self-importance learn so easily; and why older
persons,
especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all. Thomas
Szasz
ON EDUCATION
* Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. John Dewey
* All education springs from some image of the future. If the image
of the
future held by a society is grossly inaccurate, its education system
will
betray its youth. Alvin Toffler
* What we must decide is perhaps how we are valuable, rather than how
valuable we are. F. Scott Fitzgerald
* How can we help students to understand that the tragedy of life is
not
death; the tragedy is to die with commitments undefined and
convictions
undeclared and service unfulfilled? Vachel Lindsay
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