Infiltrating Academia with BuddyPress?

[This is truly a placeholder. I did a session at WordCamp Montréal and have been using this post to share slides and other relevant information.]

BuddyPress, the social network based on WordPress, is becoming more and more common in academic environments where it is used for organization, communication and learning. In this discussion we will go beyond the practical and into the human side of things to consider what effects social software might be having in the world of academia. Can we use our tools to get people to think differently? Does the use of open tools help bring openness to the context where they are used? Are BuddyPress and WordPress the best tools for the job? This talk will take the form of a guided discussion including the entire audience.

Audio Recording

(Apologies for the poor sound quality. It was recorded directly from the mixing board used in the PA system, but I wasn’t able to set the recording in the way I should have.)

Audio Recording from my WordCamp Session

Infiltrating Academia with BuddyPress audio

Slides

iWork.com

PDF

Links

Me, Myself, and I

Key People in the BuddyPress-Edu Sphere

From LMS to BuddyPress to ScholarPress

Scholarly Writing?

University’s Future?

Notes

Key BuddyPress Features for Education and Academia

  • Blogging
    • Low-stakes writing
    • Peer-feedback
  • Hosted Microblogging
    • P2
    • Link Sharing
    • À la StatusNet/Tumblr
    • Rich/Media-Enhanced
  • Forums
    • bbPress
    • Peer-Learning
    • Constructivist strategies
  • Groups
    • Teamwork
  • Podcasting
  • Social network
    • Latent function of formal education
    • Social networking for career and life
    • Profiles
    • Mentions
    • DMs
    • Contacts
  • Teaching tools
    • Syllabus
    • Schedule
    • Assignments
    • Bibliography
    • Anciliary material

Issues

  • Openness
  • Control
  • Walled garden
  • Ownership
  • Beyond institution
  • Lifelong Learning
  • Personal Learning Network

Rethinking Tenure, Part V: Broadening the Scope

Can’t We Cool Off?

Like the child of parents who are committing divorce, I just wish people would stop fighting, talking past each other, and having knee-jerk reactions.

Not that I want people to agree or get along, but it sometimes feel that debates and disagreements focus too much on some specific problems (or on some specific positions and even on some specific people) instead of looking at things in as broad a way as possible. Sure, the issues involved may be “serious” and “important.” But it’s too easy to get caught up in those issues and think that any form of thinking has two sides or that these issues are all that matters. As Michel Rivard sings: «Une toute personnelle fin du monde» (“A Very Personal End of the World”).

What else is there?

Even in the divorce case, it’s not “think of the kids.” And, despite what some teachers say, “higher” education clearly isn’t about “kids.” So, as I talk about universities, it’s not about a specific group of people. It’s about the whole picture, the whole set of alternatives. Not limiting your options to what is being presented, as in the proverbial nine-point “box.”

Call me a holist (it’s allowed in my field), but I can’t help thinking about broader ways to approach things.

Questions about Tenure

More specifically…

How can we think about tenure in a broader way? What are the implications of the tenure system? Can other systems provide something similar to what the tenure system provides? Aren’t there shifts in what’s needed from tenure? Is there more than one alternative option to the tenure system? Aren’t there broader changes related to tenure? What are the constituencies involved when we talk about the tenure system? Is it just something happening between administrators and professors?  In business, the questions about stakeholders are used to open up discussions. So, who are the stakeholders in the tenure system? Would it be enough to add non-tenure employees, students, and “society” or “governments” to administrators and professors? Isn’t the tenure system involved in a much broader set of issues, which include not only tuition fees and costs for textbooks but social expectations in terms of post-secondary education and even the meaning of life outside the Ivory Tower?

A Bit of Context

The trigger for this new post in an already-overextended series and the reason for my long preamble is a post by blogging dean “Dean Dad” (DD) meant as a response to a proposal by the New Faculty Majority (NFM), “The National Coalition for Adjunct and Contingent Equity.”

Confessions of a Community College Dean: A Response to The New Faculty Majority.

“Program for Change: 2010-2030” | A Discussion Covened by NFM.

Avoiding the Debate?

Despite my blogging from this starting point, I would actually prefer not to enter the latent or actual debate between “higher ed” administrators and contract-based faculty members. Previous posts in this series, especially the first one, contain enough about my opinions about the specific situation of non-tenured faculty. And I specifically don’t want to wedge myself between NFM and DD. I haven’t read the full NFM proposal and my reaction to DD’s post isn’t about specific “points of contention.” Personally, I would both disagree and agree with several points made on both “sides.” But, in my mind, it’s not about agreement or disagreement. And it’s not about me.

In fact, I don’t feel that connected to either side. Though I’m officially working as a part-time faculty member and I certainly empathize and sympathize with my colleagues who are unsatisfied with such a position, I have a hard time seeing this as a “side.”

«C’est la lutte finale!»

At Concordia, I’m represented by a union which has as its specific mission to defend the interest of part-time faculty members.  In fact, my union has scored some significant victories in the recent past and it seems that “my side” is adequately represented. But, by analogy with nationalism and patriotism, I wish I could be a “citizen of the World” instead of belonging to just one society.

I don’t have anything against unions. Not only was I raised in union-friendly Quebec but unions have been a relatively significant part of my own environment. Besides, the underlying point of the previous post in this series was that unions are a very appropriate way to solve labour issues, including what “academic freedom” ends up being, in a number of contexts.

Yet I think that union-mindedness can become a bit too focused, in some specific contexts. In my mind, there’s room for thinking outside of the debates and even conflicts between “union and management” (I’d say «syndicat et patronat», so much has union-speech infiltrated my life). So, to come back to my preamble: who’s involved, here? Is it a back-and-forth between employees and employers? Is it all about working conditions?

“Think about Textbook Publishers!”

Textbook publishers aren’t that directly impacted by issues related to tenure (apart, maybe, from longtime textbook adoption commitments by individual professors they bribdo business with). But they do have a stake in the current university system. Not that they contribute significantly to the operational income for “higher learning” institutions. But textbook publishers are part of “the whole picture.”

Why do I mention them here? Several reasons. One is that discussions about tenure often  revolve around money, including the money spent on faculty salaries and money spent as tuition fees. The cost of textbooks is something many (undergraduate) students may need to put in their budgets. In fact, if one is to follow “the money trail” in some educational systems, an important path in that trail probably leads to publishers. Not that textbook publishing is “where the money is.” But, after teaching courses in which students spent more on textbooks than was spent on my salary, I got to think about that part of the money picture.

But part of what leads me to think about textbook publishers has less to do with textbook costs and more to do with transitions in educational systems.

I originally thought about mentioning journalism. The advantage would have been widespread awareness of a current journalism crisis. Not that I know the financials for textbook publishers, but people don’t usually talk about a “crisis” when they talk about textbook publishers. At least, not on the side of publishers.

Yet textbook publishers, like newspaper publishers, have to adapt to new realities. Large-scale corporate concentration, longterm shifts in business practices, the cost of paper and… the Internet. If textbook publishers aren’t adapting, they might end up with significant problems. I happen to think that publishers tend to have too narrow a focus and that they will eventually run into significant problems. But even if I’m wrong, the idea remains that a broad focus can help. (And, yes, I sound like a broken record but it’s not a song which is being heard so clearly, so redundancy may help.)

“The New Realities”

So, going back to the tenure system… Universities will “need to adapt to new realities.” From the trenches, you can hear some people talk about this. But I mostly get the impression that many people in academic contexts are either ignoring the broad isuses or focusing too specifically on a subset of what “the new realities” might be.

In the US especially, people tend to talk about “for-profits.” Usually, people are against “for-profits” (at least, among people and blogs I read). The core idea, though, is that a shift is happening and that “for-profits” are part of the new realities. And what are “for-profits,” you ask? From what I gather (just heard recently about this), they’re accredited institutions of higher learning which deviate from some norm as to what colleges and universities should be like. So, it sounds like a variation on the dichotomy between “private” and “public” institutions with a shift in emphasis on the motives instead of the way these institutions are financed. The way they’re described, “for-profits” sound quite different from private universities. But the implied distinction (between “for-profits” and “not-for-profit?”) resonates in some of the same ways.

Online courses are also among “the new realities.” In this context, rarely do people connect these courses with the history of distance education. What puts online courses as part of “the new realities” isn’t really about the context in which learning happens but about some shifts in roles and goals. Part of this is connected to “for-profits” as there’s an embedded business model in people’s minds when people discuss online courses. In a way, an increase in online courses transforms these courses into products, regardless of pedagogical approaches used.

Then there’s the increase in the number of courses taught by “adjunct and contingent faculty.” It’s probably the reason behind the NFM name: the majority of faculty members  is found on the contract-based side instead of the tenure side. The shift is perceived as being mostly negative, since “adjuncts obviously have worse conditions than people in the tenure system.” Besides, ranking systems clearly state, “courses taught by tenured faculty members are inherently better.” (Yes, there was a bit of sarcasm in here….)

There are obvious connections between the adjunct-teaching “new reality” and the previous issues. For one thing, adjuncts teaching online may get even less protection than with offline courses. And one issue people have with “for-profits” is that they mostly hire people through contracts.

What these connections tell me is that we’re talking about a complex system, with numerous parts which are interacting in non-obvious ways. It doesn’t sound like a complicated causal model with a clear set of causes and a clear set of results. Especially if we consider a number of issues which aren’t frequently discussed within the walls of institutions of “higher learning.”

Alternative Learning

For an example of something infrequently discussed within the Ivory Tower: how about learning outside formal institutions of higher learning?

When a similar issue is raised (outside of the Ivory Tower), it’s often in rather provocative terms.

Bill Gates: The Internet Will Replace Universities – PSFK.

With the “money quote”:

Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university.

Haven’t listened to Gates’s whole speech but this specific quote, reproduced in a number of places, seems to imply a rather narrow perspective on learning.

Problem is, the counterpoint from universities isn’t that well-composed. “What’s the role of the university when you can get content online? The campus experience! Grades! Credentials!” I love improvisation but these reactions sound like someone trying to catch up with chord changes.

And catching up is perhaps not the most efficient way to adapt and cope to “new realities.”

Not only is the Web making it possible to attend lecture and to get learning “content,” but the world in which we live offers some new opportunities for “learning outside the school”: homeschooling, self-learning, informal learning, personal learning networks, etc. Sure, steady jobs still tend to be associated with degrees that people get, and even grades matter in some contexts. But there also seems to be an increase in contractual hiring outside the “CV and interview” system. No, getting jobs without presenting a CV isn’t likely to become an appropriate solution for everyone. But happy lives achieved without seals of approval from formal institutions represent a challenge many a university system.

Through all of this, what needs to be rethunk about tenure isn’t just tenure itself. It’s how the whole university system fits in a new context. Tenure is just a sore thumb, sticking out in a mangled hand.

ATT6: Marking Scheme

Been thinking about my “scheme” for marking assignments. It’s something I’ve designed based on some comments I was frequently making on those assignments.  Basically, all of these comments are positive but they’re set in a hierarchical structure, with “insight” at the top and concision at the bottom.

  • IF: Insightful
  • OC: Original and Creative
  • HP: Honest and Personal
  • TR: Thoughtful and Reflexive
  • EX: Appropriate Examples
  • ED: Elaborate and Detailed
  • CSF: Concise and Straightforward

In some ways, “TR” is the baseline. A “TR” paper is one which shows that the student has “done the work.” Nothing more, nothihng less.

The three marks above TR are “added value.” Not only has the student given back what was expected, but s/he put her-/himself in the work, did something unique, or even reached a high level of insight.

The three marks below “TR” are a way to emphasise the positive while pointing out some potential problems. An assignment with appropriate examples is useful, but it may not reach the expected level of understanding. Long papers filled with lots of details require some effort, but may miss the point of the assignment. And some very short but clear assignments at least show an ability to be concise, even if they don’t do much more.

These “marks” are usually combined in some way and student work can be “TR and ED” or “CSF and TR.” Order counts, with the first mark being the most important. Outstanding work will usually have “IF” as the first mark and often has two other comments. Suboptimal work is often “CSF and EX.”

Obviously, I also provide some more elaborate comments about some key points in the assignments. These range from “interesting emphasis on concept X but bear in mind that this was about concepts X and Y” to “you’ve clearly understood the issues and you’ve really managed to do something unique with this paper.” Even in those fleshed out comments, I might end up reusing the same comment, if similar issues happened in assignments by diverse students. Generic work may get generic comments and outstanding work often gets very specific comments.

As I assess an assignment, I have something close to “sliders” in mind, with something resembling VU meters. (Not literally, but the image works.) The balance between the abbreviated qualities may shift as I work with the text: “It seems to be mostly TR but maybe there’s a nugget of creativity, somewhere” or “It starts out in a very unique way but let’s check if this originality carries through.” When something reaches a high level of insight (relative to the context, of course), it can “peak out the master” and, unless the rest of the text causes a radical drop in quality, the “IF” level will remain as part of the overall assessment.

The correspondance between the abbreviated marks and points/grades isn’t linear. I typically mark all assignments before I add the actual grades, so I get a good idea about the range in quality. I usually don’t work by direct comparison, but I also won’t grade down papers just because they’re not “publishing quality.”

In fact, as may be obvious from these marks, there are many things which don’t usually matter, to me, in an assignment. For instance, the only elements of form which do matter have to do with getting the message across and displaying a thorough understanding of the material. My assignments are about insight, not about production value. More specifically, I typically don’t “grade language,” though I could do so and have done so on occasion. In most cases, I’d rather not have students too self-conscious about their mastery of normative language.

I realize how idiosyncratic my “scheme” may be, but it’s worked quite well in several of my courses. For one thing, it helps bring home the point that I’m looking for insight. And it can help me explain that length matters very little.

Owning Your Words

Seems like I’m coming late to this discussion, but author Michael Erard (FoaF of mine) is helping me catch up:

Plagiarism, the Meme Michael Erard – Home.

Part of that conversation was sparked by a piece Erard wrote in 2002 and published a few weeks ago:

Cheater Cheater by Michael Erard – The Morning News.

According to the author, that piece generated some strong reactions, including some apparently-visceral ones. (I try to avoid these, as much as possible.)

More recently, the New York Times published the following:

Lines on Plagiarism Blur for Students in the Digital Age – NYTimes.com.

[Sidenote: I have a problem with journalism (not with journalists, just with their work). As may surprise some people, the NYT appears to me to be part of that problem, not of its solution. And this piece by Trip Gabriel reminds me of diverse things I dislike about journalism. Not that Gabriel’s work is bad or that he’s a bad journalist. But I find in this piece a representation of something problematic with journalism that would take me too long to articulate here. Still, there’s some interesting insight in this piece.]

One thing I find useful in this NYT article is the admission that there might be different approaches to plagiarism and academic integrity. This is something which is discussed among teachers, but it’s the first time I see it in MSM. The very idea that we can expand the conversation about these issues is quite refreshing. Eventually, it might even help us hash out some of these issues in a less visceral and even dispassionate fashion. But I’m not holding my breath on this one.

Another thing I find useful in that “blurred lines” piece is a small set of quotes from fellow ethnographer Susan D. Blum. (Though I was apparently living in South Bend, IN when Dr. Blum became Kellogg fellow for international studies, I don’t recall meeting her.) What Blum says is not only anthropologically relevant but resonates strongly with things I’ve noticed, My summary from these short quotes: values surrounding plagiarism are best understood in a context in which individual ownership of ideas is emphasized; there might be a shift in these values through a much broader cultural change. If I hear Blum correctly, she isn’t taking the usual “techno-determinism” route (“it all happened because of this strange newfangled thing they call the Interwebs”), nor does she assign the causal relationship the other way around (“a shift to a more anonymous culture made it possible for the Internet to expand, in the last twenty years”). Instead, she’s describing a broad phenomenon, based on an understanding of some historical developments of so-called “Western” culture.

Seems to me that Jacques Attali would have fascinating things to say about this. Part of this impression is based on his work on the political economy of music which, in my mind, prefigured what has since been known as the “Napster Revolution.” But I also recall a (French) tv show about plagiarism in which he had some fascinating things to say about the developments of what RMS admonished us not to call “intellectual property.”

I have a lot more to say about all of this, including my own experience with a cheating student and diverse things about Erard’s work on this. But I got to leave. So it’s just a teaser, at this point.