‘Heat Maps’ Give Michigan State a New View of Campus Climate
from Chronicle of Higher Education
Mapping students’ perception of spaces at Michigan state university to identify (non)inclusive spaces.
“Campus-climate surveys are becoming more common in higher education…But a Michigan State survey went beyond the typical multiple-choice and open-ended questions as part of an effort to evaluate the campus climate more broadly.”
Why You Might Love Working at a Teaching College
From Chronicle of Higher Ed
James Lang’s reflections on working at a teaching college and attending a conference about rewards of such a position:
“We all talked about how our institutions gave us the opportunity to make a palpable, positive difference to the young people who enrolled in our courses and visited our offices. We all worked with large populations of first-generation college students and with students who worked long hours to help pay for school. We all took great satisfaction in helping them discover new opportunities in their lives.”
“At teaching institutions, though, making such a difference constitutes the main focus of our work. We are drawn to the job from a devotion to students — we are evaluated on it and rewarded for it in the tenure-and-promotion process. It constitutes the fuel that fires our passions. I see it every semester in the dedication of my colleagues, and I heard it from the mouths of every professor or administrator who spoke at that conference.”
More about teaching at a teaching college on this blog: Teaching at teaching-intensive institutions
Which Ed-Tech Tools Truly Work? New Project Aims to Tell Why No One Seems Eager to Find Out in The Chronicle of Higher Ed on 7/1/2016
The bottom line: Investments in Ed tech are often made without any research or evidence about the efficacy of the product and (perhaps therefore) many ed tech companies don’t see a need to conduct research about their product.
Ed tech developers and investors pay little attention to whether or not their products are effective. They “don’t see a financial payoff in spending their time or their limited financial resources on academic studies” to learn whether or not their products have the effects they claim. If research is done, it may never see the light of day if the ed tech company doesn’t like the results, “Most ed-tech studies that are now undertaken at schools of education tend to be performed as consulting projects, an approach that allows the companies that sponsor them to treat the output as proprietary information that may never get published”
UVA put together the Jefferson Education Accelerator, an ed tech incubator that brings together professors, business leaders, ed administrators, and policy makers. These individuals will spend the next year investigating the “political, financial, and structural barriers that keep companies and their customers from conducting and using efficacy research when creating or buying ed-tech products.”
After looking through the website, the outcome and goals of the Jefferson Education Accelerator project remains unclear. According to the “About Us” page, the Accelerator plans to “establish a network of educators, researchers, entrepreneurs and investors who believe in the potential of education technology, are dedicated to improving educational outcomes, and understand the rigors of testing implementations in the real-world.” How bringing these people together will improve educational outcomes is murky and raises the question: what sort of improved “educational outcomes” are we talking about? If part of the the focus is on developing a network, its important to note that the “Who We Are” section lists a group of ten individuals who range from higher ed administrators, tech investors, CEOs, former governors, and start-up founders and is notably devoid of professors or minorities (7 white men and 3 white women).
While I usually find focuses on efficacy as sign of pervading neoliberalism in higher education (which pertains here, too) it is important to understand what student’s are getting from these ed tech tools. If the tools “personalize” learning using some adaptive software, does this lead to better student outcomes? More over what is an “improved outcome”? A better grade? Is that the only measurement of success? Is success the ability to get “the right answer”? The ability to synthesize information? The ability to solve a real-world problem using the knowledge and skills gained in school?
Moreover, since they are the ones using it, how do students feel about the technologies that are supposed to be improving their education? Do they enjoy learning on these platforms? What affordances do student’s perceive in these educational technologies? If we are going to talk about efficacy, its equally important to talk about students’ perceptions and uses of these technologies.
Interview with Audrey Watters on how “Ed Tech Is a Trojan Horse Set to ‘Dismantle’ the Academy”
Discusses: Silicon Valley Narrative, the rise of personalization in conjunction with rising individualism, issue of public funding, going college to get a job vs. engage in intellectual endeavors
On tension between job+skills vs. intellectual exploration: “no amount of technological innovation right now really gets at that prestige question.”
From The Chronicle: “She’s arguing that professors should actually do more with technology, to get more involved and be more savvy. Don’t just put photos on Facebook or put work on commercial platforms, she argues: Set up your own website. Have a domain of your own.”
More in her new podcast: Tech Gypsies
Notes on The Vanishing Big Thinker in The Chronicle for Higher Education 7/28/2016
“The academic job market focuses ever more intently on contributions to scholarship over participation in public discussion.”
Focuses on humanistic social science as a way to be a public intellectual…”subject matter under study deals with what might be called the eternal questions faced by human beings and the worlds in which they live, such as wealth and poverty, good and evil, the individual and the collective, religion, power, leadership, war, and peace”.
Writing for the average person as opposed to engaging in scholarly publishing circuit.Little technical jargon, clarity in language. However this is not common in academia nor is it rewarded (along with teaching).
Highlights book The Academic Revolution (1968) by Reisman and Jencks which focused on “two emerging trends that were transforming the contemporary university: the rise of the meritocracy in faculty appointments and student admissions and the solidification of faculty control over what it taught and studied…the more America became a modern and cosmopolitan society, the authors argued, the greater the likelihood that the center of the university would lie with graduate schools and the research they produced.”
“The modern research university has become increasingly susceptible to the belief that there is only one correct form of knowledge.”
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