The Curmudgeon Speaks

I am coming up on my first examination in Introduction to Psychology. I have developed this online study task which is intended to help students prepare for the examination. It makes use of online study questions. Study questions are hardly a novel idea, but I add a twist. I have developed a system in which students are given a target score and getting to this score is figured in as part of the course grade. The twist is that you advance toward this goal when you get questions correct and you lose ground when you are incorrect. It is a little more complicated that this, but for explanation purposes this is close enough. The idea is that if you are well prepared the goal can be achieved fairly quickly. If you are poorly prepared, you will find it difficult to get to the goal. The message is – if you are not prepared you should spend more time studying. The more you know, the faster the pace of advancement toward the goal.

My idea was to offer a way to evaluate and encourage preparation in a way that would allow everyone to earn this portion of their grade if they kept working. Points for spending time in proportion to the amount of time you need to spend. This is essentially an idea that captivated me in the 70s (mastery learning) – offer clear goals and allow students the flexibility necessary to reach the goals.

I now find myself arguing with some students about the trouble they are having. Despite my warnings, some failed to grasp the core idea. I think the problem here is that they end up losing points toward their grade unless they are willing to put in the time required to make progress toward the target score. No competition – just you and the goal score. Evidently a test you can walk away from even with a poor performance creates a different reaction. It is over and there is nothing more you can do. Why is a system that does not shut the door and offers the opportunity to keep trying a problem?

The university has decided to go green. Evidently, one significant area of waste is caused by faculty and students leaving the lights on when they leave offices and classrooms. To help those of us who are absent minded or unmotivated, the U has installed those automatic motion detectors in all rooms. For me, this has turned out to be another of those lessons in the unintended consequences of technological change.

My office – I actually did not need an automatic switch to turn my lights off. I prefer not to turn my lights on in the first place. I don’t like fluorescent lighting (another issue for another post) and use only a desk lamp and the light that comes through my window. This works great for my general reading and computer work. I think it does freak out people who come to the office to talk with me. I tend not to notice, but they may think it is kind of freaky to sit in the dark and discuss weighty issues.

Unintended consequences – the automatic light system ends up turning the lights on rather than turning them off. Now, to return to the state in which I do not waste energy I must come into my office and accept that the lights will come on. I must wait a little time for the “system” to do something (this the vague part where you talk to someone and they describe the system as calibrating or whatever that means) and then I have to return to the light switch that I used to never actually turn on and turn it off.

My lecture hall – I teach in a brand new lecture bowl with state of the art equipment. The new building is a “green” building so it has the same automatic light control system. Evidently, the architects originally positioned these controllers in the front of the hall. This makes some sense, I guess. Most of the students who populate this room would be sleeping most of the time and the instructor would be the only individual moving about. I get that part.

Unintended consequence – You go to school for a long time to become an architect. Those folks are trained to think of things that the rest of us take for granted but do not have the good sense to plan for. Except in this case. When I walk into this giant lecture hall, I enter from the back because this is the entrance off the street and the location the students use. I don’t mind entering through the door used by students – it keeps me humble.

Now, here is the problem. I am in a giant, steeply banked auditorium without any windows and I am an old guy with poor vision and unsteady legs and I must walk down these stairs in the dark to get to the front so I can move about and automatically be detected so the lights will come on. I called the dean about this one. This is dangerous for an old man. The facilities people suggested I walk around the building and come in the back of the building and the front of the room. I suggested that I would consider doing that if they would have the maintenance people actually unlock this door so that I could enter from that direction (I teach the first class in the morning and someone has to unlock those rooms).

I must report that I did make headway on this one. Sensors were installed when I entered the back door this morning.

Bathroom – I don’t want to get into the details here. You can imagine where this one is going. I am just thinking that the delay for inactivity might be set a little longer in the bathrooms.

Let me begin by indicating this is a rhetorical question. I don’t know the answer.

So, supposedly there is a negative reaction to lecture courses. This format is boring and students want an alternative. Hence, proposals to flip the classroom and use large group meeting time in a different way, often for discussion, are becoming louder. I tend to try to understand issues by using my own experience. I think many people do this. There is a danger is only seeing the world from your perspective, but at least we can be aware of this problem and use our own insights as a starting point. I try to consider what I thought of similar learning situations and why.

The word “boring” annoys me. I do not think I would have described courses I took as a college student as boring. I did take courses that did not interest me. The difference is in who I thought was responsible – boring is blaming someone else, lack of interest is taking personal responsibility. I assumed I was required to take courses that were supposed to be good for me. This did not mean I would find these courses to be interesting, but I just assumed this is the way things were.

Here is what I did that very few students do now. Most departments have what are called “reading” courses. These courses might be implemented in different ways, but the idea is that these credits are more open to a focus assigned by the student and instructor. There are actually many credits available within a program of study that are not required. Once you meet college requirements and requirements for a major, there are usually lots of required credits that you get to select yourself. If you are bored or even disinterested in courses you select, this is your fault.

I used some of these credits to explore topics through readings. You do need someone to give you a grade for your work. The way it would work is that I would approach an instructor and ask if he/she would supervise a two credit readings on a topic. I would propose the topic and  the list of material I wanted to read. If the instructor was doing her job, she would probably propose some additional things I should read. We would agree on what else would be required – most often this was a paper. I would read a bunch of stuff and make an appointment to talk about what I thought was interesting. I would write the paper and this is how I took responsibility for at least part of my own learning. The point is that these credits are still there and available, but very rarely used in this way. I don’t know why. Mature students should understand that sometimes you need to allow more experienced individuals to help you explore the basics and sometimes you need to demonstrate independence and make decisions about your learning for yourself.

There was a recent book, Academically Adrift, that criticized higher education in many ways targeting both profs and students. One of the things I found quite interesting about the book was the research on what predicted the development of higher order thinking skills. I remember a couple of factors; a) does the course require at least 40 pages a week in reading material, and b) does the course require a major paper (25 pages plus). The more courses with these characteristics, the greater the typical gains in higher order thinking. The independent reading course I describe fit these criteria perfectly.

The curmudgeon should take a different approach to end of year recognition. How about an award for the loser of the year? My award goes to [drum roll] – the patent troll.

I understand a patent troll to be an individual or company (mostly made up of lawyers) who buy up patents and then use them to sue for financial gain. Patent trolls tend not to be the original developers of products and may secondarily collect patents for the purpose of resale.

While I am on the topic – I also object to “trivial” patents. My favorite example is the Apple “swipe to unlock“.  I do see that my new phone uses a padlock image, but shows no pathway along which you must move the padlock. Trivial patent, trivial fix.

This year ends as it began – I am still working on a book. This is not even a completely new book, but a new edition. What complicates the process is our effort to move away from the traditional textbook format to a hybrid that is an attempt to combine what is best about books with what is best provided online. The process moves slowly for me. I fit writing around my primary responsibilities and I must learn as I go. I don’t exactly write what I know, I write what I learn and what I observe. The holiday break gives me the opportunity to make some progress.

Writing books is not always that well received. This may surprise the general public who tend to believe this is what academics do. Some place original research at a much higher level. I guess I do to a point, but there is often a diminishing return with many studies contributing little of value. I value the researchers who identify problems and work to solve them. For practitioners, there can also be an anti-book bias. In this case, the book is seen as a commercial venture. The open source movement types align themselves with this perspective. It is evidently fine to earn a living by interacting, but not by providing the resources on which these interactions are often based. I assume what I do takes a degree of talent and commitment much in the way helping individuals learn through interaction takes talent and commitment. I am willing to compete to do what I do. Most who earn their living interacting are not willing to accept the same challenge.

I grapple with why books or at least comprehensive products in some format are still needed. Why not just follow a few bloggers who offer content appropriate to the domain you are expected to understand – what some describe as a personal learning network. I think authors provided two valuable contributions far more efficiently than a series of online interactions. First, I think good authors provide a structure that ties things together in a way that makes sense. The books from Tom Friedman offer good examples of what I mean by structure. What does the focus of U.S. education have to do with world wide access to the Internet, politics, the energy resources we rely on, and the dangers in a sense of entitlement? Offering a perspective that provides an answer to the complexities of our world Is not something you pick up from casual conversation. Writing about tech represents a similar challenge. It is relatively easy to explain how to use this online service or that software. It is far more difficult to explain to people who teach different things and who work with learners of different ages and capabilities how to make decisions about what learning experiences make sense.

Understanding is about constructing mental structures not fact collecting. Cognitive psychologists explain long term memory as a combination of nodes and links. We tend to be long on the contribution of fodder for nodes and short on the modeling of links. A structure I can identify, even if I disagree, gets me closer to crafting a structure of my own than lots of isolated tweets, blog posts, or web pages. We need models of the big picture.

The second major contribution is the commitment to providing a complete view. We live in an era of specialization. As a researcher I know a lot about the metacognitive limitations of struggling learners in self regulating learning environments. In other words, why do some learners study in such an inefficient fashion. This is good for one class period in my undergraduate ed psych class. My depth of knowledge on the other topics I cover varies. I think this is typical. I tend to know what I write about in far greater depth. This is what takes so much time.

So, this is what I think you pay an author to provide – first, a clear and creative structure appropriate to the field of study, and second, a perspective that makes certain that all the of essentials are covered in depth and with authentic examples. There are not a large number of people willing to meet these standards – the first requires some talent and the second a great deal of work. So, I am a fan of the long form and believe that it will always be important. I do understand that many are frustrated with expectation that someone must pay for the products used in education. I have difficulty relating to this position, but I try to understand it as a function of their limited experience. My wife once asked my son who has won an Emmy for his video editing skills whether he was threatened by the inexpensive tools so many now use to edit video content. “Not really,” was his reply. “I think most people will find out it is a lot harder than you might expect. I think it is a good thing when people give it a try.”

I saw this sign near my office today and it made me think. I have been on a quest for equity lately – who looks out for the little guy?

Finals are tough enough. Now it appears that some students will have to compete with other students who have the advantage of a blessed pencil.

I sign my name a lot. I am not famous. My signature is of no value to a collector. I sign my name because I am an administrator.

Sometimes I read what I sign. Really, I do. This sounds logical, but actually reading what I sign often gives me reason to pause and wonder how it is that I or anyone else could really know what I am signing to certify.

Some examples:

1) When someone drives somewhere and asks for compensation for the miles they have accumulated, I must indicate that they were not in the car with someone else also collecting mileage. I understand the logic of the policy. It just assumes a lot to think that I would know whether or not the policy has been followed.

2) Then there is my current favorite – I must indicate that a trip that someone takes is beneficial to my institution. This is what those of us in the social sciences would describe as “poorly operationalized”. Again, I get the unspoken problem – the potential concern is that someone goes to San Francisco to eat in fine restaurants and see the sites rather than attend the conference. The problem is the lack of effort to just say what one can and cannot do. Beneficial is a pretty difficult word to translate unless one is heading off to pick up a donation – most would likely agree that this was beneficial to the institution. I tend to see things a little more broadly. Heck, I think sending someone to Florida after several months of North Dakota winter might be great for their morale and hence a benefit to their productivity.

I have been thinking what might actually be necessary to assure compliance and the recent revelations of cell phone tracking have given me some ideas. I think faculty members should wear those tracking ankle bracelets when leaving town. If the satellites show two blips in the same car, we know that we have a clear violation. If we see a blip outside of the convention centers between 9-12 and 1-5, we also know that rules have been broken.

I must be getting too old for this job. We used to trust people and give them half the cost of the trips they took. The money commitment has not changed, just the trust.

It appears that the joint super committee to end all committees evidently was unable to accomplish anything.

I blame it on the simplicity of the American people and their lack of understanding that complex problems require more in the way of a solution than a mindless commitment to no new taxes. (see The Pledge)

Evidently the committee members really did not believe they had the power to compromise. It is always – you change because I am right. I just agreed to participate to make this clear.

Cut expenditures AND raise taxes. BTW – this is what Reagan, supposed Republican hero, actually did. HE DID RAISE TAXES. It is those politicians who take on expenditures such as wars with taking responsibility for covering the expenses that do not understand balancing the budget.

I have created a mantra – see if this helps:

Repeat after me – Reagan raised taxes. Reagan raised taxes. It is OK to be responsible. It is OK to be responsible. I can think for myself. I can think for myself. Rich people have a little extra money. Rich people have a little extra money. I don’t need all of those campaign contributions. I don’t need all of those campaign contributions.

Repeat as many times as necessary.

Andy Rooney has died. It seems like just a week or so ago I listened to his final piece on 60 minutes. Andy’s short comments on 60 minutes were an inspiration to the entire curmudgeon community. He had a way of making a point by identifying the strange things we all deal with and making us laugh with his dead pan humor. He used to start his monologue with trademark expressions such as “did you ever notice that ….”. I enjoyed what he had to say and how he would say it.

Did you ever notice that there are rules we seem to think we have to follow even though the rules are pointless. I always ask what problem is this rule supposed to solve, but no one ever answers. Like flags on goal posts in indoor stadiums. Do you think the kicker needs to account for the home team fans inhaling when the kick is for the win at the end of the game. I watched today – carefully – and I did not see the flag move. The kick was good as time ran out. Go Sioux.

Goodbye Andy.