For those of you who can’t resist speculating on the (in)communicative futures of the facebook generation, Mark Bauerlein has an interesting opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal:
Author Archive for David
I am always amazed at the many ways YouTube continues to evolve and find new relevance on the world stage. It now finds itself hosting evidence (or propaganda, depending on who you ask) of a controversial encounter between a US Naval surveillance vessel and some Chinese ships. According to the US Navy, who released the videos taken by someone aboard the USNS Impeccable on their official YouTube channel, the Chinese ships attempted to interfere with a routine surveillance mission in international waters. The Chinese government claims that the US ignored international and Chinese regulations by conducting this mission, and they are most likely upset over the Impeccable’s proximity to one of their most advanced naval bases.
Now, thanks to YouTube and the Navy’s willingness to “share” their footage of the incident, we can all take a look at the “evidence” and discuss our opinions online… unless, of course, you live in China where YouTube is currently blocked by the government.
One of the 8 videos of the encounter is embedded below, which shows someone on one of the Chinese vessels using a hook to disable the Impeccable’s sonar line.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlhjhDrChno[/youtube]
In his recent Wired commentary on the Burden of Twitter, Steven Levy highlights a few of the many reasons why I have avoided getting involved in Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking forums. Guilt and remorse emerge as key motivational players in his account of his recent participation in online communities. His story sounds very similar to those I hear from my friends over dinner when it becomes known that I don’t have a Facebook account. Strangely, however, these same friends always insist that I’m “crazy” not to sign up.
The bottom line for me is that I know I can’t simply sign up and be a casual participant in these types of communities. I would feel much like Steven Levy; wanting to be a responsible and contributing member. At the same time, I don’t want my communication with friends, family, and other potential online acquaintances to be consistently motivated by guilt and producing remorse (like Levy’s). These kinds of interactions seem neither meaningful nor effective. As an outsider (cautiously contemplating moving in) I’m curious: isn’t it all way too much to handle after a while? I can barely keep up with my email as it is. I think in order to be a responsible online citizen I should remain offline when it comes to social networking.
The American Psychological Association’s Science Directorate has just published an article by Marguerita Lightfoot on the potential of electronic communication in the context of psychological interventions. Given many adolescents’ preferences for communicating via the internet over face-to-face interaction, researchers have found that young people may respond more positively to behavioral interventions conducted over the web compared to more traditional interpersonal and group-based models. E-interventions may be especially beneficial when therapies are focused on issues that are hard to talk about, such as the sexual risk intervention reported in this article.
These innovations in psychological practice and research represent interesting and effective uses of the principles of e-learning outside of the classroom in important applied contexts.
Fresh off of the Institutes’s conversation with Bernard L. Schwartz and planning for the next Annual Symposium on Communication and Communication Intensive Instruction, I have found myself to be highly attentive to issues of audience in communication. I am fascinated by how these issues are playing out on the political scene during Barack Obama’s transition into his role as President Elect. His audience has substantially changed from the democratic base and undecided voters to the nation. However, I keep asking the question, has his message changed?
I think back to what usually happens in elections, when soon after winning and taking on a new audience, we often see drastic shifts, not only in politicians’ messages, but also in their personalities and communication styles. It may be too soon to tell, but I am not noticing these often disheartening shifts with Obama and his underlying message surrounding his short-term and long-term visions for the country.
For those of you interested in empirically investigating this question, here are some pieces of data:
Obama’s interview with 60 minutes while on the campaign trail…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHe8N5hL0Wo[/youtube]
A piece of his post-election interview with 60 minutes…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTl6UmlaL2E[/youtube]
Also, you can take a look at the content of the postings on his Obama Blog.
Finally, consistency we can believe in.
I’m starting to get a little bit worried about the rash of strangely written and borderline grammatically incorrect advertising slogans in the media. This is especially true of fast food advertisements. The slogan that bothers me the most is McDonald’s “i’m lovin’ it.” I understand how dropping the g makes the slogan less impersonal and more relaxed, but the lowercase i really irks me. What’s the point?
Other celebrated and effective examples include Apple’s classic “Think different,” and their more recent description of the new iPod touch as “The funnest iPod ever.” Even the Obama campaign’s “Change we can believe in” ends in a preposition.
The worst thing about these slogans is that the television viewing public is exposed to them on a daily basis. Many of these slogans are not necessarily incorrect, but they violate several rules we try to teach our students in efforts to improve the clarity and effectiveness of their oral and written communication. I can’t help but wonder about the extent to which these slogans are negatively impacting the communication skills of the viewing public. The advertising industry seems to be on a mission to legitimize incorrectness.
I just read an interesting article by Mark Bauerlein in The Chronicle about how students’ approaches to reading and interacting with information online seem to be hindering their ability to read and learn from texts in more traditional settings. Specifically, he contends that:
The inclination to read a huge Victorian novel, the capacity to untangle a metaphor in a line of verse, the desire to study and emulate a distant historical figure, the urge to ponder a concept such as Heidegger’s ontic-ontological difference over and over and around and around until it breaks through as a transformative insight — those dispositions melt away with every 100 hours of browsing, blogging, IMing, Twittering, and Facebooking.
This brings up a lot of interesting questions as educators are increasingly trying to incorporate some of these technologies into the classroom and publishers are pushing textbook content into more profitable eBooks. Are we actually helping students by doing all of this? Some initial studies of middle and high school students suggest that technology-intensive curricula do not improve student achievement.
Bauerlein has many interesting points in the article and makes a good case for “unplugging” some aspects of teaching and learning. However, in my opinion, the question of whether or not technology in general improves/impairs student learning is not that interesting. Instead, we should be focusing our assessments on understanding which technologies can be usefully employed in which aspects of the curricula. Finding pedagogical fit for relevant technologies seems to be what we are striving towards at BLSCI. Thus, as an institute, we undoubtedly have much to contribute to this important discussion.
In BLSCI’s application for the TIAA-CREF Hesburgh Award, we made use of the writing diagnostic assessment data to demonstrate the many ways the Institute has grown over the past 10 years.
As Figure 1 and 2 below show, BLSCI fellows support faculty teaching a number of distinct Communication Intensive Courses (CICs) across a variety of disciplines. As Figure 2 shows, the largest representation of faculty teaching CICs is in departments that have traditionally placed a heavy emphasis on both written and oral communication, such as English, Modern Languages, Marketing, Management, Performing Arts, Sociology and Anthropology. However, the institute has also supported CICs in departments that have not traditionally incorporated communication intensive elements into their curricula, such as Accountancy, Natural Sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, and environmental sciences), and Computer Information Systems.
When we look at these data and hear about all of the great work going on at the Institute during our staff meetings, what we often don’t take into consideration is the amount of expansion that has taken place over the past ten years. As Figure 3 demonstrates, the number of faculty supported by BLSCI has steadily increased, reaching a peak of 144 last year. The number of faculty currently teaching CICs is nearly three times what it was ten years ago. Despite some minor fluctuations, the number of sections of CICs has also increased dramatically. Specifically, as shown in Figure 4, the number of sections of CICs offered last year is nearly five times as many as there were in 1997.
There is no doubt this kind of institutional growth contributed to BLSCI’s being awarded the Hesburgh award. However, the most interesting growth going on at the institute is arguably what happens on a more micro level among students, faculty, and fellows throughout continued mentorship and collaboration. Although we all get to observe this in our individual work, it’s often hard to demonstrate this kind of growth across the institute. As we keep on thinking about and celebrating growth at BLSCI we continue to think about ways to assess it. It’s my hope that this post will spark some ideas among readers on how we might approach this kind of assessment next semester.
As part of their Mobile Learning initiative, Abilene Christian University has begun a new program that involves giving iPhones to incoming freshman. With the iPhones and the software they’ve designed, an incredible amount of innovation is possible in extending the classroom and giving students access to learning materials that are both class-related and college-wide. Imagine having syllabi, access to research databases, and course readings available anytime with just a few touches! They also describe plans for the use of podcasting, hybrid online/in-class discussions, and instant polling throughout their “mLearning” initiatives.
This and other programs in their Mobile Learning initiatives are available on their website. They even produced a video entitled “Connected” which provides their vision of what it might be like for a student who has access to this powerful technology.
As you’ll notice in the video, the iPhones that students get are not restricted to educational use. Facebook and other social networking sites are accessible, along with general internet, texting, and emailing capabilities. You can also see how the technology may present particular problems for communication in the classroom and more generally between students and professors. For example, professors are texting students and encouraging online research during class discussions.
So, although their programs may have a lot of potential to change the way students learn for the better, I worry that they also risk creating distractions and promoting poor communication. How connected is too connected?
As many of you know, last month BLSCI applied for external funding from an organization that recognizes exceptional faculty development programs focussed on enhancing undergraduate teaching and learning. In order to make our case for the award, we included some preliminary results from the Writing Diagnostic Assessment data. I’d like to use this post as an opportunity to share some of these results with readers to demonstrate the effectiveness of the work that many have been doing over the years and get some feedback regarding ideas for future analyses.
When looking at the data, on average, students start the semester with scores on both the expectations and writing quality variables in the “middle” range (scores around 3). When we then looked to see if students’ scores significantly improved over the course of one semester in a CIC, there were no major findings. This was because many students started the semester out scoring high (scores from 4 to 5) on many of the variables, and thus did not have any room for improvement (as measured by the diagnostic scoring criteria).
However, when we looked at students who scored in the “low” to “middle” range on all of the variables (thanks Diana for this suggestion!) we observed statistically significant increases from the beginning to the end of the semester on all variables. These increases were consistent across disciplines and schools as well. The figures below illustrate the changes we observed in the data separately for the Weissman and Zicklin Schools.
Although these results are based only on a subset of the data we’ve been able to clean, match, and analyze (~ 5,000 students), they nonetheless illustrate that the work of BLSCI in creating and implementing CICs seems to be paying off for students across the board. Although most probably knew or were able to sense this already, it’s always great to have “hard data.” We would love to hear readers’ thoughts on these findings and how you see these data stacking up next to the work you’re doing with students in your own classes. Also, as always, any general thoughts and/or questions on the assessment data are welcome.
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