Campus Technology article: Students Unimpressed with Faculty Use of Ed Tech

November 6, 2009 By 1 Comment

Eva Fernández of Queens College recently shared this interesting article with us on Facebook. I thought it might be of interest to many of you. It’s funny that I am forwarding this as it is almost like the article virtually traveled across the ocean and back!

Perhaps it’s generational, as Eva also wonders. I have an impression that whereas some adults are very tech savvy enjoying playing with iPhone, Facebook, twitter, etc. there are many others who are very resistant and proud to ignore it altogether. On the other hand, for many (or most) students, technology seems to be something that is woven into their lives much more closely. I would love to hear what your thoughts are.

That said, where I work in Japan there isn’t much technology implemented in classroom teaching yet, and I am yet to hear of somebody who uses social-networking tools in their teaching. There are some online education tools that we use over here for students to self-study (outside of classes), about which I am hoping to write soon.

Filed Under: Online Learning, Technology

The Afterlife of Ephemera

November 5, 2009 By 2 Comments

Last June, Hillary wrote a post on zines that led several of us here at cac.ophony to “come out” as ex-zinesters.  To continue the conversation about zines, I’d like to point out to folks the most recent issue of SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.  They’ve devoted a whopping 74 pages to a comparative symposium on feminist zines, featuring both essays and full-page reprints. (Full disclosure here: some of my old zines are cited, including in Barnard Zine Librarian Jenna Freedman’s essay, in which she discusses a zine I edited when I was an angst-ridden teenager. I find this both flattering and terribly embarrassing.)

laurenOver the summer, Jenna invited me and several other people who had donated our zine collections to the Barnard Zine Library for tea (how Seven Sisters!), and we all spent a lot of time in the stacks flipping through the zines that were in circulation. This was certainly a nostalgia trip down memory lane, and a quite physical one at that, as we were literally looking at and holding the very photocopied and stapled pieces of paper that we may have once kept stashed in boxes and bins under our beds and in our closets. Seeing zines in their original form now archived in a college library is quite a different experience from seeing them discussed or reprinted in a fancy academic journal, however. The attention is nice, but one’s interaction with the zines feels at least one step removed. Even if you read the print version of SIGNS rather than online, the reprinted zine excerpts don’t look or feel like the original. (And, in this case, reading this issue of SIGNS online instead of print allows you to see the zine reprints in color).

I am fascinated by the “afterlife” of those objects that were once considered to be—or were created to be—ephemeral. They live on in discussions by critics and historians, and in historical archives, libraries, and museums. These days, they are also being revived digitally, including on Google Books. You know, in the pre-blogging era, when we were sixteen and pouring our angsty hearts out on paper, did any of us have any idea that the words and images we created would still be in circulation? If we did, would that have changed what we produced, how we presented ourselves, or who we considered our audience to be? I wonder.

Filed Under: Audience, Media

Accent reduction….redux

November 4, 2009 By 4 Comments

In a recent Business Policy rehearsal, we were discussing anxieties about public speaking when one group member made the following statement:

“I’m concerned about my accent. The only way to get a good job in the U.S., is to not have an accent.”

I was stunned…. firstly, because this student did not have an accent that was impeding her ability to communicate effectively; and secondly, because I had never heard that this attribute would prevent someone from getting a “good” job.

The Baruch Campus is incredibly diverse, multilingual campus. Everyone has an accent of some sort, right? In this global economy, could this attribute truly prevent one from getting a job?

I bring this issue up again, link it to previous Cac.ophony thread discussions, the Baruch Teaching Blog, and Baruch resources…

A pertinent and persistent student issue!

Filed Under: Cross-Cultural Communication, Jobs, Language, Oral Communication, Uncategorized

Assessment: the dirty word

November 3, 2009 By 1 Comment

Now seems like as good a time as any to reflect on something that’s been on my mind for a while: assessment. While maybe not the most exciting topic, I think it’s a really important and prevalent one. To be clear I’m referring to program assessment here, not assessment of student writing. Until last year my only experience with and training in assessment was through working at community-based organizations, specifically programs for youth that incorporated education and work readiness as well as several other elements. While this experience had its ups and downs, last year I figured out pretty quickly that assessment means something very different in the university context. I, of course, saw assessment and the implementation of Writing Across the Curriculum at CUNY as a great marriage. Faculty in different disciplines trying out different pedagogical tools? Lots of written products, i.e. data? Opportunities for different people to get together and talk about their teaching experiences, what works and what doesn’t? Great! I really did not expect the resentment and lack of cooperation I received when I began to talk to faculty about these issues.

Rather than focusing on all of the problems and tensions around these issues within some (not all) universities, I thought I might mention a few basic elements often emphasized by community-based organizations:

First, assessment should be truly collaborative or it can quickly become extremely divisive. Transparency seems really important here. Asking for all kinds of information about someone’s classroom, students, and teaching without being clear about how that information will be used can be a great way to alienate faculty members.

This leads to the second point, which is that assessment should serve as a means of improving the overall quality of education in a particular department or discipline or university rather than as a policing mechanism. While it’s important to be aware of areas that need improvement, highlighting best practices is equally, if not more, important.

Finally it seems important to start and finish with the people actually doing the work, in this case, faculty members teaching writing and using writing as a teaching tool. Being aware of the needs of these folks allows the assessment to be more than charts and graphs. This way the information gleaned from this assessment project can be put to practical use. This is also a good incentive for faculty members to cooperate and provide useful data. It can even make it possible to enlist their help more directly. While faculty and administration often have different priorities, they don’t have to conflict. I think both groups have some stake in assessment and, if designed and implemented properly, it can help both meet their goals.

Filed Under: Administration, Assessment, Communication Intensive Courses (CICs), Writing Across the Curriculum
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