EdTechPost brought me a post NoteMesh - another student-centric note taking service. Upon first read, I thought this sort of collaborative approach to note-taking — an essential skill in my estimation — to be detrimental to learning. Maybe not. Maybe collaboration between the stronger and weaker students could result in “the rising tide lifting all boats.”
After all, an essential element of education is, in my view, the development of knowledge, skill, and experience in working on teams.
The other day, I visited one of the psychology classes that I am working with. As we waited for the class to start, the professor seemed to be having a problem with getting the classroom computer to recognize her flash drive. She looked panicked, because the whole class depended on the file she had in the stick.
Then an Asian student, apparently technology-savvy, stood up and offered help by switching the flash drive to the back slot. (I didn’t know, but apparently those front slots sometimes don’t work as well as the back ones). And voila! the computer recognized it this time. Relieved, the professor said, “Thank you! Class participation, right there!”
I was born and raised in Japan like any other Japanese kids, and after I graduated from college I went for a Master’s degree in the UK. Before I left, I took a prep course on ’studying abroad’, taught by someone with her Ph.D. from the Michigan State University. I still remember feeling overwhelmed and scared when I learned how “in universities in the US (and probably the UK too), class participation is mandatory and you will be penalized for not speaking up in many of the classes. If you don’t speak up, they think you are not paying attention, you think the class is boring, or you don’t have any ideas”. In Japan, this is definitely not the case. It is not common to speak up or discuss something in class unless it is a specially designed ‘discussion course’ (and you don’t come across such courses often). Most of the classes are just lectures, where the teacher does all the talking and the students just listen, nod every once in a while and take notes. You are not supposed to express your opinions in class. You can speak, but that’s only when you answer the questions asked, when you want clarification, or when you can’t read his handwriting on the blackboard :-). Presenting different opinions from the teacher’s (or your seniors’ in general) is often interpreted as rebellious or rude and they say that you show respect and politeness by being silent and not interrupting. In some ways, you are ‘participating’ by being quiet rather than chitchatting with your friends.
In such an environment, it is hard to be critical about the subject matter, at least on the spot. Although you are given an opportunity to express your opinions elsewhere (in your term paper, for example), the style of instruction is definitely not the same as in the US, or for that matter, in many parts of the western countries. You also have much lesser opportunities to do group work or give oral presentations.
Of course, I can’t speak for everyone in Japan when I talk about this. Some Japanese people are extremely proactive and talkative. But it seems generally true that Japanese students find it harder to ‘participate’ in classes in American schools. I think it is also somewhat true for students from other parts of Asia. As far as my experience of teaching in this country goes, Asian students are generally quieter than other students (they almost never open their mouth unless they are one-on-one with me). I wonder if that’s too much of stereotyping, or there is some truth to it. I also wonder if there are other factors in other cultures that are associated with a particular communication style. (E.g. an aggressive communication style associated with some kind of cultural, or even linguistic, factors?)
In any case, if the way students were raised and taught in their own culture has something to do with the typical communication style they have in college, then there needs to be more recognition of ‘cultural factors’ when we think about students’ communication skills. It may not be just language issues that ESL students from Asian countries are facing …
I am not suggesting that we should be easier on Asian students just because of this. Of course, some students may be just too shy to speak up; some students might be just insecure about their language skills. But it may simply be that they can’t help but ‘participate’ according to their own cultural scheme. It would be good for those struggling ones to know that their culture is (at least partly) responsible for the ‘participation issues’ they have, feel better, and then think about what they can do about it. People who already know this do strategize. Someone I know reckoned, “You can’t fight off those western people. Participate before everyone else starts doing so (e.g. Give the class the review of the last session or homework answers, which are relatively easy to do and you have less competition)”. Surely this Asian guy in the psychology class knew what to do: help the panicking professor set up the class!
Enough of all this heady stuff! Angry professor smash puny cellphone!!!
I draw your attention to an article in the Spring 2006 issue of the Sloan Management Review.
If communication has any major outcomes at all, it certainly must be one of fostering collaboration. Indeed, many of the posts on this blog deal with collaboration technologies.
Peter McAfee’s article asks whether we have the right technologies. Perhaps, but I also wonder whether we have the right change management processes in place to provoke and/or incent the use of the technologies.
For me, the catchy quote from McAfee’s article is “While all knowledge workers surveyed used e-mail, 26% felt it was overused in their organization, 21% felt overwhelmed by it and 15% felt it actually diminished their productivity.”
Yikes!
Last week Diana Rickard and I organized a luncheon in the Sociology and Anthropology department to meet with faculty and talk about their concerns with students’ writing, and generate ideas for the faculty development seminars we plan to run later in the semester. Once Diana skillfully moved the conversation beyond the frustrations around having to teach grammar to college students we typically hear in these meetings, it became clear how engaged our participants, mostly full- and part-time junior faculty, were with students’ writing, and how creative some were in designing assignments to increase participation. I especially appreciated the fact that talk about the “problems” of CUNY students regarding oral and written communication was kept to a minimum. In fact, the Chair explicitly stated that his colleagues in elite schools frequently mention dealing with similar issues. While it is true that the diversity in the academic backgrounds of CUNY students pose real challenges, it is important to keep in mind that our students do not come from a different planet. Does anybody else think that sometimes, in our efforts to understand and be sensitive to the needs of our students, we border on pathologizing them?
It seems as if every time I turn on the television, there’s a show on that promises to help me organize my clutter. Believing that our environment influences our ways of looking at and being in the world, the show promises to give me the tools and teach me the tricks that will ensure a clean living space that will give way to a “cleaner” mental space. Suddenly, I think to myself that I too can conquer the world if I can conquer my clutter.
Everyday, I must obsessively check two email accounts and, time permitting, I check six other email accounts. I say “must” because if I didn’t check these accounts frequently, the amount of email will reach an overwhelming magnitude. Each account has a purpose, and each account seems to be swimming in its own madness that doesn’t have a method. If only there were a show that promised to help me organize my web and computer clutter.
When we think about technology and Writing Across the Curriculum or Communication Intensive Instruction, we try to think of creative ways to infuse communication instruction with technology. We turn to blogs and email lists and discussion groups and services such as BlackBoard. Every addition adds to the bulk of our email inboxes and the sites we bookmark and visit everyday. With more technology comes more reading, more viewing, more commenting, more time in front of our computers, less time doing work that is–and, yes, this still exists–paper-based.
When I was teaching composition, I once got a paper from a student that was written entirely in the language of text messaging. Another student of mine tried desperately all semester to use her Sidekick in class by hiding it in her purse. She even tried to convince me that it was her electronic dictionary. At the CUNY WAC orientation in September, someone suggested that we get students to use more technology in the classroom by asking them to do an assignment in the form of a text message. I thought to myself: My students didn’t need help with using technology in the classroom–they needed help knowing when to differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate uses of technology, how to organize their technology, how to streamline their technology, and how to keep technology from keeping them from non-technology based work that they still have to do.
I’m assuming that these students will grow up to be professionals, will enter into a life that demands eight or more email accounts, subscription lists, discussion groups, and more web-based services that have yet to be invented.
Technology has given us the tools to be creative in communication intensive instruction, but it hasn’t necessarily given us the tools to make our lives easier.
When I was teaching composition, I was told that integrating my students into academic life was part of my job; I was told that because the instructor is in many ways a liaison between the student and the college, I had to help them become academically responsible, even if this meant helping them learn simple things such as why they shouldn’t sleep in class, why they should come to class, why they should take notes, where they should go when they have a problem with registration or financial aid. At some colleges, there are services or orientation events that help students learn these skills.
I’m not advocating that we use less technology. As much as I bemoan the state of my inboxes, I love checking my email. I’m just thinking that sometime between getting my first email account and today, I missed a step.
If we ask our students and instructors to use more technology, to use technology creatively, to make technology-based communication part of the curriculum, do we also have a responsibility to provide them with skills to help them become more “technologically responsible?” Does the state of our inboxes affect our mental states? Would our academic lives be easier if our inboxes, bookmarks, and other technology-based communications were organized? What would a technology “De-Clutter Plan” look like?
In his book Saints and Scamps: Ethics in Academia (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman & Littlefield, 1986), Steven M. Cahn espouses a traditional view of the professor as an expert who is responsible to “lead students to master appropriate subject matter” (10). Cahn criticizes teachers who “minimize their own importance and emphasize how much they have learned from the insight and imagination of their students” (9). Instructors who abandon their authority in favor of more “egalitarian” classroom practices, he argues, are shirking their responsibility.
Communications pedagogy seems to embrace much of what Cahn criticizes, probably because Writing Across the Curriculum and similar programs have their roots in the egalitarian movements of the 1960s. The peer review process common in many composition courses, for example, directly counters the hierarchy of the master-pupil relationship: here students can learn from one another without a great deal of intervention from the “expert,” at least on peer-review days.
I’m wondering if there is any dialogue going on regarding this issue, and if not, whether there should be. Are most writing instructors on the same page about this, or are there voices out there who would restore the preachers to their pulpits, so to speak? I ask because I hear students complaining from time to time that they get little out of such things as the peer review process. Their colleagues aren’t proficient enough to offer any meaningful guidance, they say. I confess wondering sometimes whether the older pedagogical model is perhaps more beneficial to students than we tend to assume.
Wired online has a nice article today talking about Wikis beyond WikiPedia. In particular, it explores some of the other programs that are useful for groups creating a WiKi:
Several companies are trying to cash in on wikis by making it easy for non-techies to start sites allowing quick and easy collaboration. Among them are Jot, Wetpaint, PBwiki, Wikispaces, Wiki.com and Wikia, started by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
Some of these wikis already allow WYSIWYG editing. “I’d like to see the PTA wiki. We are on the cusp of making the tools simple enough for the Parent Teacher Association,” said Socialtext CEO Ross Mayfield. Socialtext is attempting to make its WYSIWYG click-and-type editor more widespread; at this year’s Wikimania conference, Socialtext announced it was working with Wikia and Wikimedia to integrate Wikiwyg into Wikipedia’s software.
I am wondering if any of our readers (or bloggers) have used any of the above Wiki sites for course-related wikis.
Check out the article!
Also: file under meta-blogging, I guess, but I just copied and pasted from Wired’s website and noticed that all the hotlinks carried over. I never noticed that before. WordPress (the blogging medium we are using here at http://cac.ophony.org) is good.
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