Category Archive for ‘BLSCI’ at cac.ophony.org

Archive for the 'BLSCI' Category

Intern feedback

Published

on June 18, 2010

. 1 Comment

Five months ago, I was recruited by the Schwartz Communication Institute as a “Presidential Intern,” through a program originated by President Stan Altman. The Presidential Leadership Program was designed to provide students with hands-on experience contributing to substantive projects for the College.

My work was to begin rebuilding the Institute’s website. The new website was going to run on WordPress, and I would need to write a plugin as well. Sounded like a lot of fun, but for someone who barely knew WordPress, it also sounded like a challenge.

My name is Florian Chauvin. I am an exchange student from France (Lyon), enrolled in the MBA program in Finance, at Baruch. Five years ago, when I first went to College, in France, I decided to learn how to build websites in order to make a little money. I liked the idea of learning something that was probably going to help me in the future instead of going to work for McDonald’s as many French students do. Looks that I was right. The Schwartz Communication Institute sounded more interested in a web designer/programmer than in a Big Mac expert.

Therefore, even though I am a self-learner, I would consider my knowledge of php at the time I started to work for the Institute as fairly advanced. This background helped me quickly learn how to use WordPress and how to develop a plugin.

WordPress is pretty easy to work with. I was once told that if code could be thought as poetry, then parts of the WordPress code were lousy poetry. I have to say that I didn’t really have the opportunity to evaluate the accuracy of this statement since you can write a plugin pretty much without having anything to do with the core code of WordPress itself. This turned out to be a great point.

The major critique that I could address to WordPress’ plugin system is the small amount of documentation available out there. It is sometimes hard to find information about functions that are not among the most popular. As soon as you want to do something a bit more complicated than just using a predefined hook, you can end up spending hours on Google, forums and the codex before coming up with an answer. For example, it took me quite a while to figure out how to implement AJAX functionality on the front-end while keeping it reasonably clean. It is usually just a matter of time before getting things to work and a few trial and errors do the trick just fine, even though the process can be somewhat frustrating.

The first part of this Internship has been to write a room reservation calendar plugin that would allow the Institute to effectively manage the rooms used by Fellows to meet with students. The challenge was to be able to represent the different rooms in the same calendar so that it could be seen at a glance, which ones were booked at what time, by whom. We would therefore need to have a representation of the time, the day and the room in a 2 dimensional area. Squaring the circle basically. We thus compromised and decided that seeing a lot of days at the same time was less important than seeing all the rooms.

Despite all the great calendar plugins out there, we couldn’t find one that could be customized enough to do what we wanted, so I wrote a new plugin. I probably spent about 200 hours on this plugin and tried to make the code as flexible as possible, even though I am sure it would still look amateurish to a professional.

I spent the rest of my time rebuilding the website, not only to make it look more appealing and modern but also to implement some social networking features that would contribute to making it a hub around which the Institute’s online life would revolve. For that matter, the WordPress plugin Buddypress is the ideal solution. It allows members to interact, create groups, forums, personalize their profiles and so on.

My main job here was to create a visual theme for the Institute. The easiest way was to adapt the Buddypress default theme to our needs. Nothing more than a little CSS, HTML and a few other plugins were necessary to complete the project.

Here is a list of the plugins used:

Buddypress – Social networking functionalities
Custom Profile Filters For Buddypress – Turns personalized words into links in members profiles
Peter’s Login Redirect – Redirect users after they log in, depending on their class
Exclude Pages – Makes specified pages visible only for logged-in members in the top navigation. (The plugin has been slightly modified)
Member Access – Makes specified pages accessible only to logged-in members
Redirect – Adds the possibility to turn specific menu links into external links
List-Members – Generates a list of members for staff directory
mCal – Online reservation calendar used for the rooms management
Contact Form 7 – Contact form

On a more personal note, this Internship has been a great opportunity to meet a lot of people and explore new horizons. Being a Finance major willing to work in the Corporate Finance department of a major entertainment company, acquiring an extensive knowledge of WordPress (used by a growing number of businesses) will undoubtedly make my profile more valuable and attractive. I believe that in many aspects, this internship was one of the most rewarding educational experiences that I’ve had.

Also, I would like to thank everybody at the Institute who helped me, inspired me and believed in me. I just wish I had had more time to improve the website and develop new features that would have made it even better. Maybe a job for a future intern.

Once Again Back it’s the Incredible…

Published

Luke

on May 18, 2010

in BLSCI, Baruch College, Blogs and Blogging and Pedagogy

. 3 Comments

the blog animal, ZOE, blogfessor number one.

For the second straight year, we’re awarding the Blogfessor of the Year Award to Zoe Sheehan Saldana, of Baruch’s Fine and Performing Arts Department. The award comes with priority support from the Schwartz Institute on all online publishing endeavors. Of course, Zoe already has that because she’s so awesome.

Zoe developed three sites on Blogs@Baruch this academic year. Last Fall, she did a Do-it-Yourself Publishing site that used FeedWordPress to syndicate nineteen individual journals where students documented making their own books from scratch (some digital, some not).

This Spring, she used a site in her Basic Graphic Communication course… here’s a description of her course and how she used her course blog from her “About” page:

…this course

This course introduces the graphic design process and methodology. Conceptual and creative thinking is stressed and understood through problem-solving assignments based on research, readings, and classroom demonstrations. The student is introduced to graphic design principles and exposed to historical and contemporary models and current standards of advertising and design. The Macintosh computer is included as the primary graphic design environment. This class is a prerequisite for all advanced Graphic Communication courses. Complete course guide available here, as a PDF file.

…this blog

This blog is a venue for presenting, exploring, and discussing work, ideas, and topics pertaining to the course.

And, finally, together we developed a site for the Focus on Photography Exhibit which served initially as a processing space for members of the Baruch community to submit photos that they wished to be considered for a physical exhibit (which opened last week at the Mishkin Gallery). The site’s since evolved into an online companion displaying close to 200 images submitted by Baruch students, faculty, and staff. The submissions process used the TDO Mini Forms plugin to collect information from applicants, allow them to upload their images, and then it published those images to password protected pages where the exhibit judges could asses them. After decisions had been made about which images were accepted for the physical exhibit and which were not, Zoe hacked the Monotone WordPress theme (ideal for photo blogging) to create the online exhibit, which will live beyond the one at Miskhin. The amazing photographic ability of Baruch folks is a topic for another post, but I encourage you to take your time and click through the exhibit to see the fantastic images these folks have captured.

What’s so great about Zoe, beyond her gracious personality and charm, is that she’s exactly what an educational technologist like me needs to get better at what I do: someone who asks questions that I don’t know the answers to, patiently awaits the answer, and works to arrive at a consensus around what can be done with the tools, time, and resources available. She’s a great collaborator and a creative teacher. And, as she showed in talks she gave at last year’s CUNY WordCampEd and this year at the Baruch Teaching and Technology Conference, she has a strong grasp of the pedagogical, political, and philosophical impulse behind what we’re trying to do with educational technology at the Schwartz Institute. As her course blogs and her own art show, she’s an O.E.: Original Edupunk, and both Baruch and the Schwartz Institute are lucky to have her around.

image credit: lumax art

Of Student Debates and Other Demons

Published

Orlando

on November 19, 2009

in Assessment, Audience, BLSCI, Baruch College, Communication Intensive Courses (CICs), Debating and Faculty Development

. 0 Comments

photo credit: mhonpoo

I finally figured out what to write about for Cacophony! Following the advice of my colleagues at the Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute, the best way to approach this was to write about something I am familiar with in the context of my work. As a professor myself, I set specific guidelines and objectives when giving assignments to my students in order to avoid writer’s block because of the openness of possibilities. I don’t want to curtail, however: Cacophony’s open posting policy makes it versatile and unique.

I hope this post gives some basic guidelines for anyone out there interested in organizing debates as a classroom assignment. The topics of the debates I am coaching are in the 12th Edition of the Management and Society textbook issued by the Department of Management at Baruch College. But you can device your own and have students do a little research to defend their positions.

The first step is to assign students to groups and divide the groups into PRO and CON sides of a given topic. Then, provide precise instructions about the format of the debate. For example, one format consist of a ten minute opening presentation, followed by a five minute period for rebuttal, and three minutes for conclusions, going back and forth between the PRO and CON side. Ten minutes for the PRO, Ten for the CON; five minutes for the PRO, five for the CON; and three minutes for the PRO, and three for the CON. You can make them longer depending on the number of participants and the time available.

Make sure students understand that the objective is to persuade the audience that their point of view (in the debate) is the most valid: they need to make arguments.

In the beginning, they should introduce themselves, the issue, the point they are defending and any terms that might be unfamiliar or that might take a particular meaning in the context of the debate. For example, in a debate that deals with whether genetically modified foods should be labeled, it is necessary to know from the beginning what constitutes a genetically modified food product.

Encourage them to read the materials a couple of times (in the management course I coach these are organized in chapters), even the reading for the opposite team. In that way they can figure out a strategy to organize their presentation as well as anticipate the points are going to be brought up against their arguments. It’s also important for students to practice their entire presentation out loud so they have an idea of time management as they become familiar with public speaking. In terms of oral presentation skills, you should emphasize to the debaters that they should not read, and should maintain eye contact with the audience, which is a non-verbal way of engaging their attention. Index cards are an acceptable way of keeping track of the order of the arguments they will stress, but in order to avoid reading too much from them, suggest they write bullet points, rather than entire sentences.

If they are using numerical data such as statistics and/or percentages, remind your students that if they are hard to understand, the audience will just glaze over them. Quantitative data should be easy to read and understand and should make a strong point. If they are quoting textbooks or the internet, make sure they cite valid sources and not just random articles (especially online), and that they have those sources (author’s names particularly) readily available during the debate, in case someone asks.

Time does not have to be equally split, but all students in a team must participate. Have students dress professionally (although this is not a strict requirement). Attire is a non verbal language that reveals many things, and it is difficult to find credible someone wearing an oversized sweater whose sleeves are longer than the arms. Lastly, remind students to keep their language appropriate and to keep their composure. Debates can get heated, but for as much as a Jerry Springer fight will definitely engage the audience, the loudest people are usually revealing insecurity.

The end of each debate could be marked by an open Q&A period where the audience can participate and ask questions or comments to the presenters. Here you can explain how the topic is still current and give an informal assessment of the students’ participation.

Against Grades and Grading

Published

Michael

on September 29, 2009

in Assessment, BLSCI, Grading, Pedagogy, To Ponder and What if . . .

. 5 Comments

The majority of students from the Business school who come to the Schwartz Institute to rehearse their company or industry analysis powerpoint presentations seem to look at the rehearsal process as an opportunity to improve a necessary skill. This has been one of the most rewarding aspects for me of my work as a Communication Fellow: the students are always grateful for the help in improving their public-speaking skills. They are motivated by the idea that they are helping themselves. I like that I do not have to grade their work for them to see it as important.

The institution of grading students on an A through F scale has done a horrible disservice to education. It has falsely given the impression to generations of students that the teacher or the professor has some ultimate authority over the value of their work, as if their own assessment of what they were doing was somehow secondary. The result of this institution is a division among most students into two groups — a group motivated by competition and the drive for the teacher’s approval, and a group lacking in motivation with little interest in the teacher’s assessment. What is missing all too often among students in both of these groups is the sense that their education is their own.

I have found several methods of correcting this problem that work within the extant system. By far the best of these methods is to ask students to write self-evaluations. All teachers who have ever taught a graded course know that students approach them to apologize for not having completed an assignment — the proverbial “my dog ate my homework” moment. The self-evaluation taps into the students’ innate authority over their work which is too often evident only in their apologies. If you ask students to write about how they have approached the assignments of the class and you ask them to write about their own perceptions of their strengths and weaknesses, they very quickly begin to realize their own agency in the learning process and to begin take responsibility for their own education.

Of course the best thing, I think, would simply be to do away with grades and grading altogether. I know that for many people this suggestion amounts to advocating “mere anarchy.” Without the carrot and stick, there would be no motivation anywhere among students, no assessment, no accountability. It’s true that in all likelihood, the students who come to me to rehearse their powerpoint presentation are not motivated purely by their own desire to improve. Their presentations are graded and they want to get a good grade. Well, perhaps this is true. But in a time when the movement for standards has taken over every level of education, I find some comfort in recollecting a different ideal.

Two Cultures, Two Kinds of Audiences, and Two Forms of Communication

Published

Hyewon

on May 11, 2009

in Audience, BLSCI and Symposium

. 3 Comments

Tuning into the current stream of our collective reflection upon last Friday’s symposium, here I put in my two cents. Like my fellow attendees, I found Jeff Jarvis’s Google speech extremely exciting and thought-provoking, which made him the perfect fit for the morning session. It is, however, Peter Elbow’s talk about the usefulness of occasional ignoring of the audience that resonates more deeply in my mind. I am currently reading his book, Writing with Power, and it allows me to think again about how the relationships between author/speaker and audience should change according to two different forms of communication, verbal and written. To reiterate the point he made, writing is more solitary and process-oriented than speaking is, so audience-forgetfulness can be a good strategy for early stages of writing. Elbow’s empiricist approach also classifies the different types of audiences such as safe or dangerous, caring or discouraging, real or imaginary, and so on. I found his notion of the ghost audience that we carry with us in our head particularly intriguing:

“The audience in our head usually affects us more when we write than when we speak. When we speak, the real audience is right there dominating our attention and drowning out other audiences. When we write, however, all audiences are in the head, even the real audience. In the dark of the brain a real audience is easily trampled by an insistent past audience” (187).

Elbow’s advice is that, in order to exorcize the demon of the dangerous internal audience that inhibits our words or thoughts, we need to actively “change” our audience and capitalize on the support of a loving audience that we once had or that we can imagine. I think that this suggestion could prove useful in improving our teaching methods, too.

Finally, attending the Institute’s symposium reminded me of C. P. Snow’s 1959 argument on the division of two cultures, the sciences and the humanities. I assume that in this case it is the division between business and academia whose cultures we try to bring together, as partly shown by Jarvis and Elbow. I see how these seemingly disparate fields can hit it off and have productive conversations in the right setting like this year’s symposium.