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My New Laptop/Device Policy

2014-09-18T02:01:12Z

So I have been thinking a great deal about pedagogy lately, partly because I made the move to a University that focuses on teaching, partly because I am now chair of the department, and partly because I felt that it was just time, that I had a way of doing things and hadn’t spent as much time thinking through whether or not that way of doing things was the most effective, or more to the point whether or not there was reason to change.

My Old Laptop Policy

I used to have a mostly laissez faire laptop policy. I was of the attitude that students could be responsible for legislating their own attention. I was also persuaded by the idea that in most parts of their lives post-college they would be free to have laptops, or even more generally computing devices, out and use them. Indeed even within academia at things like chairs or faculty senate meetings many people have computing devices out. At most points in your life no one tells you you cannot have your computing device, part of being a professional and an adult is figuring this out: when it is appropriate to use a computing device, when it isn’t, and when it is okay to be distracted and when it isn’t. And since I think about my job as broadly speaking an issue of helping young adults become the adults they want to be then it struck me as a bad idea to take control away from them, to actively police their attention rather than teach them how to marshal their own attention. I don’t teach because I want to police people, I do it because I want to help people learn, and at the core of my pedagogical belief is the idea that students learn best when they are in charge of their own learning.

But lately

But the last couple of years I have noticed a distinct difference between class discussions when students have devices out in class and ones in which they do not. A few days I begin experimenting with subtle ways to change the class dynamics. It started by creating an activity that required them to close their laptops to do something, write something down, talk to their neighbour etc, and then transitioned into a discussion. If students didn’t open their laptops the discussion went better, was more productive, more students participated, more engagement, more listening. Things would start to shift once students started re-activating their devices. And I have an attendance policy, students aren’t free to miss class, so maybe I needed a device one . . .

Potential Policies

I suppose their are a range of policies, from the let students do whatever they want as long as they aren’t disturbing their neighbour policy. To the shut off wifi in the room and not allow any devices to be out during class (I guess there is even the more extreme policy of seizing devices if you see them out . . .). No way I would want to go with an extreme solution, making the decisions for the students forcing them to “behave” just wasn’t going to work for me, whether thru technological means (locking the wifi out) or through dictator means (me setting an absolute policy and enforcing).

But still . . .

I kept coming back to wanting to build a better learning environment for my students. And as most of the research now suggests laptops in the classroom can be a serious impediment to learning. I appreciate the digital network, value it, see its potential for social good. But I also recognize that no technology is neutral and that any piece of technology brings with it affordances and limitations. And the limitations of the ubiquitous connection and plethora of screens and distractions kept coming back to me. I won’t spell out all of my reasons here or point to all the research. Mainly though because I don’t have to, because Clay Shirky pretty much wrote that post already, and I would pretty much agree with everything he wrote.

But then again . . .

But then again I really wasn’t ready to commit to a full on ban of laptops in the classroom. I considered Howard Rheingold’s policy of only allowing a certain number of students to have laptops open at a time, something he discusses in Net Smart. But I decided against it. Instead I did something else . . .

What “we” did . . .

The class itself is about digital media, and intro to digital media course. So there is an unusual opportunity in this course to make the issue of attention, distraction, and media not only a policy but a subject of discussion. This class has as one of the texts Rheingold’s Net Smart in which we read the section on attention very early on, as well as discuss some of Cathy Davidson’s work. I began that day by asking them to shut their laptops, turn off their devices as we discussed attention. What followed was a fruitful, and mature discussion about devices, how and why we use them, why they distract us, and what it does to the spaces we inhabit and socialize. And importantly I should say I tried to not make it about “us adults” vs “them kids” which I think is how the debate gets too often framed. I used examples from my own life our experiences where I have been totally guilty of not paying attention.

So, at the end of class I decided, actually sort of more or less decided this on the spot (so this wasn’t totally well thought out) to then make the discussion about what the policy in class should be, make the question: how do we in class want to make sure we maximize attention while still respecting individual choice. Different students expressed different opinions, pretty much everything in Shirky’s piece came up (the issue of not only individual attention, but those around, the spiral effect of once a few check out lots do creating a downward spiral). Then I had them vote they got to choose between two policies.

Individuals in class can freely choose, although thoughtfully so about their own device use in class.
Devices in class are to be turned off, for everyone, unless directly being used for class.

The vote was really close in the end something like 9 or 10 for choice #1 and 11 or 12 for choice #2. So in the end that’s the policy. No device use, except when directly related to the work going on in class. I should probably say that I am not totally comfortable with this, it seems still a bit like students are being forced to behave in a certain way. But I like it because the community chose to have it that way after a fruitful informed discussion. I think one of the things that makes me most uncomfortable though is how close the vote was. So I definitely plan on revisiting later in class, letting them discuss the policy again, and maybe we can even create a laptop zone in class, where students can use devices, but only if they sit in those seats restricting the distractions to one area, so those who know its a problem for them can avoid those seats, and also students would have to pre-decide (before class began), and admit that “hey I want to be able to check facebook,” in effect uping the transaction cost, but still leaving it ultimately up to them.

And all of this might totally fail, as often it does, but hey, then it will just be a reason to have another conversation and re-work things.

(Side note to this whole thing, take it for what it is worth, small sample size and all, but the students who were most vocal about wanting to preserve the overall community of the classroom were all women, and the ones who were most vocal about the more liberal policy were all men . . .not sure if that’s significant.)

Buying a Bunch of Printers

2014-09-18T11:01:20Z

But not that kind of printer . . . .

Background

I am teaching a course on 3dprinting this semester (you can see the syllabus here if you are interested it is a mix between theory, history of information & communication, and praxis, printing stuff). It has been a difficult class to construct and think about, in large part because the desktop 3d printing market is so young and these things aren’t nearly as easy to use as computers or 2d printers.

The Issue

So one of the first “big” choices I faced in teaching a class about 3d printing was solving the hardware issue. Unlike say teaching a class that requires students to blog, I can’t expect them to have the hardware. Indeed, I am pretty much guaranteed that students will not have personal access to a printer so I needed to figure out a way to provide them. This creates a few issues. First, printers cost money. It would be nice to provide enough for each student to have one, but that isn’t probably economically feasible. Right now a printer cost anywhere between $300 and $3000 (okay they can actually cost a lot more than $3000 but for my purposes am playing in the $300 to $3k range). Second is ease of use. The easiest option is to go with Makerbot. It is really just plug and play. Makerbot comes with its own software and is really easy to use. Indeed its ease of use is probably what makes it so popular among educational institutions, especially the secondary ed market. But Makerbots are expensive $2,900 or so. It’s true you can purchase a Makerbot pull it out of the box, load software onto your computer and be printing in 10-15 minutes. And for the most part you can get fairly good quality prints out of the machine.

But …

Aside from cost there are two big issues here. First is that Makerbots are too easy.

Too easy?

Yes. Too easy. Part of what I want students to learn is the technology of these things, how they work, their ins and outs, to think about the way they work, along with how they work. By making the machine less easy, it seems less like “magic” and more like something students are capable of intervening in/modifying. Thinking with machines means understanding how to make interventions. The Makerbot’s principle advantage is the software, it is really easy to use, but that comes at a cost, not understanding how the software works.

Which brings me to the second problem with going the popular Makerbot route: lock-in. If you learn to use a Makerbot, you get really good at learning to use a Makerbot, but that knowledge doesn’t so easily transfer to other systems. Aside from the deplorable path they are taking in terms of Intellectual Property it seems the Makerbot system is likely to be one of a 3d printing ecosystem that is convenient to use but in which you are locked in, unable to transfer out (similar to say the way iOS works).

There are other options. If I wanted to go the expensive route and had all the money in the world, and wanted easy printing I would probably select Ultimakers.

Cost and Learning.

One of these, ready to use printers, cost in excess of $2000 though. True you can actually get a much cheaper one like the Davinci but they also require that you buy their plastic not just any plastic. Thus, you end up back at the 2d printer problem, where companies sell them at or below cost only to extract higher profits from buying the printer cartridges and ink. No thanks. So in the end I decided to purchasePrintrbots. They are inexpensive, work well, you can tinker with them, and since they are built on the reprap platform aren’t going to be restricted to one kind of plastic. We got a mix of the Plus models and the Simple models. I’ll report back later …

File Sharing in the Classroom: PirateBox and LibraryBox

2014-07-02T16:32:32Z

Background

Last semester I had the advantage of teaching in the new Communications and Digital Media classroom here at Saint Joe’s. It’s a fabulous space, that just on architecture and design changes the learning environment. (Key technology: moveable tables and chairs.) But the classroom was in part over designed, or at least in some areas, using high end software that was less than user friendly. Case in point: Tidebreak.

The idea behind Tidebreak is that any computer in the room can share their files with any other computer in the room, large or small. And even more “snazy” the instructor can “copy” the screen of any computer in the room and display it at the front of the room. So when students are working on projects in groups it is easy to demonstrate one groups work for the whole class. (There are a lot of other features in Tidebreak but these are the major use scenarios.) The problem is the tech is clunky, not easy to set up, and even less easy to use. For me it often got in the way of accomplishing what I wanted, spending time figuring out how to use it, rather than having it fade into the background. Due to the expense of tidebreak, and its less than ease of use, we decided to not renew the license. But I still want a way to replicate some of the functionality in that classroom. Primarily I want a way to share large files easily between computers. Not just from instructor to students but also between students, a large shared drive in the classroom for students to deposit and retrieve files. A use Dropbox a great deal in the classroom to share small files with students, but this isn’t as effective if you need large files. For example if you are working on image or sound manipulation and want to share a bunch of files with students, size quickly becomes an issue. Also Dropbox still replicates the faculty centered knowledge model, distribution takes place from me to the other students. True students could also share files from their own Dropbox accounts, but that quickly gets cumbersome.

The Solution

Enter PirateBox and LibraryBox. (Click the links for more in depth descriptions.) I must admit I have a bias towards lower tech hardware solutions over higher tech software solutions. Not that this line is entirely clear, but I would rather control the hardware and have something in place than rent a software license to do something. Piratebox and LibraryBox are essentially local hardware solutions to filesharing. They each create their own independent local wireless networks for file sharing, think very local shared drive. That is, in each case you have to be physically close to the “box,” and connected to it via wireless. Once connected you can download and share files. This type of setup allows you to upload files to the box (wirelessly) then all of the students can download them easily. Poof low-tech, cheap (more on this later), solution to file sharing. And since this is a lowtech solution I am not so concerned about it breaking (and more importantly not paying a yearly license fee). True I could go the shared drive route, have the University set up a shared drive on the network that students can access and share files. This would probably work for small files, although it would also carry the cost of central authority at the university level where you have to get permissions correctly enabled blah, blah, blah . . .

So this summer I set up a PirateBox and a LibraryBox played with both with the intention to use at least one (maybe both) this coming summer. After installing both and playing around with them I think I am going to start though by using PirateBox, although LibraryBox is much easier to use. Why?

PirateBox vs LibraryBox

Both systems operate on essentially the same architecture. In fact LibraryBox is a fork of PirateBox by Jason Griffey. The crucial difference though is LibraryBox maintains central control, with the main administrator having the ability to control the files being shared. It works better as a system for one person to upload a bunch of files and allow an infinite number of local downloads. That is it isn’t really configured to allow multiple users to upload files (anonymously) and share them anonymously. This can be a good thing though, I imagine in many use cases someone would install a LibraryBox and want to make sure it is used as a local means to share only approved files. This indeed strikes me as the central motivation behind forking PirateBox. make a version for libraries that allow the local hosting and distribution of files, say in a Library, or more creatively perhaps as part of a digital installation like in a history exhibit or art installation, or again in a classroom or lab for sharing files with students. Without central control the library (or whomever is hosting) will run into the copyright problem (people uploading files which infringe on copyright) or egads . . .the porn problem. So from an institutional perspective this central control makes sense.

And it should be noted that a serious advantage of LibraryBox is the installation. Although both PirateBox and LibraryBox are set up via the same methods I found LibraryBox markedly easier to install. Jason’s instructions are really thorough and he was really responsive to questions (nothing like customer service even though I ain’t paying for a thing). He even wrote up an extra FAQ after I asked him about PirateBox vs LibraryBox. The install was really clean, no errors, super simple. The only “difficult” part is just waiting for the install to take place (this step takes a bit, in my case 20 minutes). Indeed the only problem I had was in wiping the router and setting it back to factory default so I could try PirateBox (that was tricky, involved putting router in safe mode . . .lots of terminal work . . .blah, blah, not so easy, wouldn’t recommend).

PirateBox on the other hand was a little trickier, for whatever reason the documentation was not as clear. Indeed at some point I couldn’t figure something out and looked back at the steps I followed to install LibraryBox to set it up. Eventually I got it working, and I don’t know if this is significant or not but it took more like 40 minutes to install, using the same hardware as I did for LibraryBox, twice as long (don’t know if that is significant or not).

But still I am going to go with PirateBox. Why? Because at least for my use PirateBox embodies more of the hacker, decentralized ethos we are trying to convey to our students. I don’t want them to necessarily ask for permission from me to share and exchange files in the classroom. The anonymity and design features of PirateBox are closer to what I want my students to practice and think about.

What I Used

I used a TP-Link TL-MR3040 which cost me $35. You can actually do it for cheaper but the MR3040 is smaller and can run off a battery so it is far more portable. But if you don’t need portability you can do it for cheaper, just make sure you get one of the approved routers for the LibraryBox or for the PirateBox. The only other thing you need is a flash drive. I got a small 16GB one, but if you envision sharing really large files it might be worth going for one with more storage capacity. My next step is to design and print a case for it, to give it a cool look. And if you don’t want to build your own you could always just buy a LibraryBox, I don’t know if you can just buy a PirateBox. All in all for less than $50 you can create a robust local file sharing system either anonymous and centralized, or anonymous and decentralized.

Check back in after the semester to see what how this went, and what my experience with it is.

My New Way of Handling Teaching Materials

2013-08-19T19:17:35Z

Adventures in GitHub

This semester I am trying something new for teaching

A while ago Brian Croxall suggested that what we need in higher educaiton is a Git Hub for syllabi. Or more precisely Brian was suggesting that we ought to alter the frame by which we think about creating, modifying, and sharing syllabi. In his piece for Profhacker Brian suggests that we should think of syllabi as itterative documents, which we borrow, and share with each other. The model for this is GitHub, the platform for sharing coding projects. When coders want to build on the code of other coders they do what is called “forking,” basically taking the code from the original creator, and building on it for one’s own purpose (with a link to the original source). I am not going to recast the enitre frame here (although I think Brian’s argument is useful, a way to think about our practice of producing syllabi), instead I want to share how I am going to attempt to do this.

I wanted to start producing syllabi in such a way that it was easy for others to see, to borrow, to reference, to iterate, borrow from others and publish in a range of formats (web, print, etc.). The idea here is to write and store the syllabus in such a way that makes it easy to use/reuse, push to various locations, and to “rip-mix-burn” with what others are doing. Rather than go into all the details about why I would want to do this (again see Brian’s post and the links he provides as a starting point) I want to walk thru how I am doing it. This is very much still a work in progress, so I have a lot yet to figure out.

The Format: Writing in Separate Markdown Files

I started by writing in Markdown. There are lots of reasons I am chosing to write in markdown rather than say a Micorsoft Word document, another word processor, or even in html. The most important of which though is its portability. It is relatively easy (more on this later) to write in Markdown format and then export it to one of the other formats I need (to say the web, or a word processing document). Also markdown has the advantage of having really simple syntax (just a few things to remember) and yet handling everything I need, bold, italics, headers, blockquotes, lists, and links. In fact I have started writing everything in markdown first, including this blog post and my current research articles. It had a really short learning curve, and after just a few days it feels totally natural. I like to write in a program that on the left is the writing format, and on the right is a live formated rendering of what I am typing. This really helped with learning to write in Markdown. I mostly write in a program called Retext but there are lot of options for writing in Markdown depending on what system you are using, and I suspect in the future I will just compose in a basic text editor (but for now the live preview is a nice crutch).

For now I keep the schedule of readings in in one file, the course description (policies, textbooks, grading policy etc.), the course information (time, date, classroom, office hours) all in separate files. I actually think that in the future I might separate out the description into a few more files (making it easier for someone to just borrow or “fork” that part of the syllabus). I think the more discrete units that I break the syllabus into the easier it will be to source, modify and credit it. You can see all the files I currently have here. There are other things in that folder (.odt files and .pdfs I’ll get to those in a moment). So essentially to edit the syllabus I just edit the markdown files (the ones listed as .md).

The Core: GitHub

I am organizing this all through GitHub, or rather publicly sharing it all through GitHub. I actually write and edit the files on my computer and then “push” the changes to GitHub which is updated. This allows others to view, share, and modify portions or all of my syllabus rather easily. More importantly GitHub handles the tracking of this sharing and referencing (forking). So if someone wants to “fork” my syllabus all they have to do is joing GitHub, set up their own account and fork the syllabus. For those unfamiliar with Github you might want to check out The New Yorker Article. Simply put though GitHub is a place for sharing information, iterating that information, and tracking those iterations, whether they are yours or someone elses. Really the ideal platform for sharing syllabi and assignments. And since the files are published in markdown you can actually just read the text right there, no downloading and opening a file.

One of the key features of a Git system is that it acts as version control, this way I can easily keep track of the changes I am making to the syllabus. Or, for that matter others can see the changes I have made to the syllabus over time.

As the semester progresses I am going to add in an assignments folder where I plan to write up all the assignments as separate files. This will help me to iterate the assignments, to borrow my assignments from others, and to share them with anyone else.

Publishing the Syllabus

So I’ve started to think across all areas of my writing about separating the text from the particular venue. Just writing in close to plain text (hence the turn to markdown) then exporting the text to whatever format I want, applying the “styling” at the point of publishing not the point of composition. Right now I am using Pandoc to compile all the markdown files, and convert them to various formats (.odt, .docx, .html). In fact the .odt and .pdfs in the link above were produced this way. The “syllabi template” file just applies the styling so that when the markdown files are compiled into a document file it looks like a print syllabus. Doing it this way made it ridiculously easily to put my syllabus online as html but to also produce a print copy to hand out on the first day.

The key is that I will only edit the markdown files and have the others be updated. Right now I have to manually update (i.e. tell Pandoc to do this) but in the future I want to get this step automated, so that I edit the markdown file and the website will automatically update, along with the “print” version.

This Wasn’t Easy

The problem with this is that it wasn’t easy. There was a lot of learning curve both with GitHub and converting files. I could justify this as both related to my field of study and I am interested in figuring this out (not the least of which because I am thinking about using this as a way to share research as well). But honestly this isn’t really a workable solution for most academics, especially the non tech savvy. Even with programs that make interacting with GitHub easy, or file conversion easy, this is still a bit labor intensive. I think now it actually saves me time as I can write the syllabus once and update it across venues easily. But I certainly haven’t reached the point where I am saving myself more time than it took to learn. But I do think both in terms of composition and in terms of sharing this is certainly a model for how we as academics can share our pedagogical resources.

Which Brings Me To . . .

I think what we need is a way to do this (outside of the CMS’s Universities use), but do it with relative ease. Something like GitHub for syllabi. Enter Coursefork. This seems to be the niche they are going for, easy to use uploading of teaching materials, with the ability to edit, share, and credit others work. I’m not associated with Coursefork, although I have been able to use the Alpha system and they seem to be headed in the right direction. I don’t know if they will succeed or not, but I will say that I hope that something like this does succeed, both in the practical sense (a platform like this would be useful) and a more abstract sense (the idea of forking and sharing syllabi). After spending sometime working like this I am convinced that forking and sharing syllabi is the way to go, we just need practical tools for it, along with the conceptual framework of “forking.”

Note: I want to give a lot of credit to Andy who not only already did this (so I modeled my workflow after his) but also had put his EMAC 2321 syllabus on GitHub which serves as the reference for the COM 200 syllabus I put up. Unfortunately in the learning I didn’t get the forking right and so my syllabus doesn’t show as a “fork” of his, something I need to figure out how to correct here.

Next Year. Something New.

2013-04-26T20:43:21Z

I have accepted a job at Saint Joseph’s University, to be chair of a new department focusing on digital media. So in the fall I will be an Associate Professor and Chair of the Communications Department at Saint Joseph’s University. I am really excited about this job opportunity, as the “next thing I want to do.” SJU is building a Communications major focused on digital media and social engagement. For me this hits the intersection of two of the things that I am professionally most interested in, coupled with the chance to help build and develop this program this job turns out to be an exciting next move. In many respects I just feel honored that the existing faculty at SJU thought I was the right person for the job. Although making a move to something new can be a bit intimidating, I am really excited to work in this program.

When I was considering taking the job a few people I talked to thought I was crazy, asking why I would want the responsibilities of a chair, why I would want to leave a TT track job at a research institution (where I was just getting tenure) for a smaller institution. Maybe they are right, but I think there is a lot of upside to taking the job as a chair, especially at a liberal arts school that values teaching. More importantly though I really like helping to build things. And while I was weighing whether or not to take this job I looked at academics that I really admire, like Kathleen Fitzpatrick or Dan Cohen, folks who gave up secure tenure track jobs to pursue doing something new and I realized this wasn’t an opportunity I wanted to pass up (to be sure I am not giving up tenure this job comes with tenure). This is a chance to do something new, and focus down on what I really value about higher education: working with students, and empowering them to build a better world.

And so as much as I appreciate the chances and opportunities I had here in EMAC, and as much as I will miss working with the students, in the fall I will be moving to Philly . . .

P.S. That’s actually a photo of the building where my office will be (I think).

A Dunbar Number for Educating

2012-12-12T15:00:11Z

This semester I have been doing a lot more administrative work for the EMAC degree. As the program is growing, both in terms of faculty and students we have to have more conversations about sequencing the courses, course content, and overall examining the pedagogical experience of our students. As one can imagine this rather easily leads to a discussion about how many students we can put in our classes, how we can cover more sections of the same class, faculty resources, etc. So partly because of this, and partly because of the recent discussion about MOOCs I started wondering, what is the ideal student to instructor ratio for a semester. What is the Dunbar number for teaching?

The Dunbar number (rather famously used in internet and network studies) is the sorta of limit of the number of people one can maintain social ties with, the number of people your brain can hold and still remain close with. Often sociologist reference this number at 150 (and yes I am aware that this is a contested idea, but we can save that debate for another time). So you can have roughly 150 close ties with people but as you start to meet more people and develop more close ties some of those other 150 start to fade away. A human brain can only handle the cognitive load of maintaining tight social bonds with so many people. Its worth mentioning that there is probably variance within a population, some individuals having higher Dunbar numbers than others. And its probably also worth noting that one reason this comes up in social media research is because people often ask if social media can extend a Dunbar number, making it possible to maintain a higher cognitive social load.

But this got me to wondering what is the Dunbar number for instruction. That is at any one time what is the number of students I can interact with, what is the cognitive limit of the number of students I can maintain and have a consistent interaction with. I think we can all agree that the fewer the students the more time I have to spend with each, and versa visa, the more students the less time I can spend with each. But I am hypothesizing about something slightly different here. What is the educational cognitive load? What is the Dunbar number for instruction? At what point do the edges start to fray and do I lose track of the students I am interacting with over the course of a semester?

So here’s my guess, and this is just a starting point. I think my Dunbar number for instruction is about 45-60. That is over the course of a semester I can handle about 45-60 in classes and still interact with them, become invested in them, and try to treat each (as much as possible) as an individual who is having an educational experience in which I play a role. Keep that number under 60 and I pretty much “know” all of my students. If someone walks into my office and says “How is Steven doing this semester?” I know about his semester. How he is doing. How he is engaging the material, and probably some additional material about where he is at with in the program and what interests him. Keep that number under 60 and I think that is true of all of my students. But as that number rises over 60 I start to lose the ability to “keep all the students in my head.” That is I start to lose track of some, they disappear, fade into the background. I can keep tabs on most but I end up focusing on the ones who need challenging, or the ones who are struggling, and some in the middle get lost under the weight of too many students.

I think that this is somewhat independent of class size. That is I could handle one 50-60 person class, two 25-30 person classes, or three 15-20 (or heck even 5-6 classes of ten each). Yes ideally the smaller classes would be better, but I think if I were teaching just one large class I could use some of the non class time to spend extra time looking at student work, engaging with them outside of class etc. . . I also think this is somewhat independent of graduate students’ whose committees I am working on. I think that since I already have an established relation with them they are probably already in my real Dunbar number. Also I think the load is different depending on what types of students I have that semester. If I have a lot of first years that number trends down closer to 45, and if I have a chunk of students I have already had in prior classes I can push that number to the higher end. Note I am not directly talking about time commitments here. Obviously doing my own research, handling committee assignments, and a personal life all “cost” time, I am really just talking here about “cognitive load.” What is the “cognitive load” of students I can handle in any given semester?

Hypothesizing about this, I just put this question on Twitter last night, and really to my surprise most people agreed, placing their number at the 50 range. Sure this is a biased sample, and people are probably influenced by past teaching experiences. But its a rough guess and a good starting point for a conversation.

Why This Matters

There has been a great deal of discussion about MOOCs lately, expanding the number of students in a classroom, or in a related discussion classroom size, or faculty workload. If we distill down to the core what it is I do as an instructor/teacher I can only handle so many students doing that job. Sure I can lecture to hundreds if not thousands a week. Heck the tech would make it possible for me to lecture to millions (just record a lecture), but that really isn’t what I see as teaching, that’s just broadcasting content, the same as writing a book and letting someone read it. So, it seems to me that MOOCs or blended learning, or whatever, are precisely the wrong way to go. Increasing the cognitive load of teachers isn’t the answer. Our value add isn’t in broadcasting content, but rather in working closely with students.

The institutions we work for have an interest in efficiency how can you maximize the number of students who learn with a given professor. But if there is a cognitive load max there is a point at which there are diminishing returns, where by adding in more students the institution is undermining the very value it seeks to add. And by big fear here, we end up creating a tiered education system whereby a certain class of people get the in classroom, close work with professors, and another get the discount $10,000 for four years model that doesn’t involve being closely valued and attended to by an instructor.

Okay, so here is my question is there any research on this? What is the cognitive load max for you for a given semester? All else being equal what is your Dunbar number for instruction? Leave a comment, interested in hearing from folks.

More About Knowledge Cartels

2012-10-10T15:10:19Z

In conjunction with the keynote that I gave at the Computers in Writing Conference this year, I wrote an article for Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture. For those who are interested this piece articulates, in a slightly different manner, why I think that Open Access issues are fundamental to the work we do in the academy. In this piece I argue that the conversation about Open Access is just a small part of the larger discourse surrounding knowledge rights and the current effort by a few parties to restrict the flow of culture and knowledge.

The Next Step for the MLA Job List

2012-09-24T16:11:18Z

(I probably don’t have time to fully develop this point, but here goes . . .)

It should come as no secret to people that I am an advocate of open access, that was, after all, the focus of my talk at Computers in Writing, and a frequent subject on this blog. Indeed many have accused me of being militant about open access, a moniker I’ll gladly wear. Not to get to far off topic here, but I think this is one of the defining issues of our time, the ability to which we recognize knowledge rights as human rights, and resist the current trend to comodifying and restricting knowledge access.

Which brings me to the article in The Chronicle, covering my previous post, and MLAJobleaks. Which has kicked off more discussion about the Job Information List (JIL), especially on Twitter.

Let me be clear, once again, I like the MLA and as many have pointed out the last five years the MLA has made many positive steps towards recognizing the changes the digital both affords and demands of institutions like the MLA. But let’s consider the long game here, 10 years from now what is the future of the JIL, I am going to predict one of two things. Either the JIL is open (as in really open not pseudo occasionally pdf open, but the database is just free for anyone to look at) or the JIL disappears. Why disappears? Because other options that are free (to access) and present the information in a more useable format are going to replace it. I can even imagine a whole new multi-disciplinary job list separate from The Chronicle, InsideHigher Ed, or Higher Ed Jobs popping up. There is probably even a way something like Interfolio could host one of these that would put all the others out of business . . .

So, knowing this the real question is what is the future of the list. That is how does the MLA avoid being obsolesced in this transition. And here’s the thing, I think the people at the MLA know this, know that transition is coming and they have to do something about it. But they are caught, as the article points out, in a rather difficult position, where the organizations revenue stream is tied to this obsolete business model. They have to transition, but doing so is difficult. The question then becomes how to do this. And again Rosemary knows this when on Twitter she pleads for patience.

But you see this isn’t just about the future, rather it is also about the present. It’s easy perhaps for me to have patience, I have a tenure track job, I am not on the market. But the people who are currently on the market don’t have that luxury. Saying change is coming, is nice, but that doesn’t help the people who need it now. So the question becomes two fold 1. How to transition effectively. 2. How to do so in a way that implements stop gap measures in the meantime. For what it is worth and so I don’t seem like someone who is just needlessly critiquing, here are some suggestions (recognizing that I don’t have all the information and nuances of how the JIL operates internally at the MLA and who gets to make those decisions).

1. Start by being honest, recognize that the list is currently not open, and that there are people who do not have access. Claiming it is open is just open washing. Explain that the reason it is closed is a business decision and that the MLA is committed to in the future making a correction to this and making it open.

2. Provide a time line. Be concrete, give people a sense of how long till the list will actually be open. One Year? Two Years? Saying that it will be open in the future doesn’t help.

3. Provide a stop gap measure for those who currently don’t have access. On the login screen and on the about JIL page, prominently display the above information, along with the ability to get access if you currently do not. For example, let users without access fill out a form with name, email, institutional affiliation, and request access. Have those requests moderated and approved. Giving everyone access to the database within 24 hours of request. This doubles as providing info to the MLA about the people who currently don’t have access. Provide the above info on this page, and this page. And doing a press release about this would help as well.

The Future of the MLA Job List

2012-09-19T15:08:03Z

(First a brief disclaimer. Generally speaking I like the MLA, I think its core mission, to advocate for languages and literacy education is an important one. And for those who don’t know my PhD is actually in English, so I feel a certain affinity for the scholars there. And recently the MLA has made a turn to promote what I feel are important issues to in the field, like open access journals. Indeed, I think Rosemary Feal and Kathleen Fitzpatrick (new head of scholarly communications) deserve a lot of credit for taking the MLA in the right direction, but . . . .)

Open-Washing

The Modern Language Association released the Job Information List last week (known as the JIL) , but it is probably more accurate to say they released the database. The term list here refers to the bygone era of analog job lists and publications; now job seekers log onto a website, and view jobs posted by the MLA. Except they didn’t really open up access to the database, what they did was allow those with MLA membership to access the database. In other words if you have a membership or a member of an institution which has a membership you can see the list, and if not, well no job database for you. Just to be clear this isn’t to post jobs, this is merely to see the jobs. In other words the database is paid access.

Last year the MLA claimed that the job list would be open access, as in available to anyone, so to some the fact that accessing the database still required a subscription seemed problematic. Later Rosemary Feal, the executive director, explained that the database was still restricted access, but that anyone could receive access to the .pdf copies of the list, published twice this semester (once in Oct, once in Dec.) So, in short the database is closed, but a published version of the database is available to the public. The MLA website says, “printable PDF files of the JIL are available free of charge on the website.” What that section doesn’t mention is that those are not updated as frequently nor available at the same date as the online list. And given the current competitive job market, the ability to access this list in a timely manner is crucial.

What ensued was a heated discussion between myself (and many others who I will let add themselves to this list if they want) on Twitter and Facebook about this policy. To us it seemed an unfair policy (why lock down the list) and a disingenuous claim to state that the list was open (when in fact only a limited version is being made available to the public)-this in my mind is know as “open washing.”

So, I am going to call bullshit on this one. This list is not open and MLA’s policy of maintaining a restricted access to the database is unethical (and they know it). Why? Let me explain.

All About the Benjamins

The MLA claims that access to the database is a service which it provides its members. If you join, or your host institution joins you will be given access. In the analog days of job hunting this somewhat makes sense. There was a cost to distributing the list, to printing it an mailing it and getting it in the hands of anyone who wanted it, jobseeker, curious academic, member of the press, faculty members etc. But now given the affordances of the digital network the cost of distribution is trivial, and while not zero is pretty darn close (bandwidth does cost).

So why does the MLA still restrict access. The answer is pretty simple: money. One has to pay both to get a job listed and to access the list. Why? The rational seems pretty clear to me. If the MLA opened up the list, i.e. didn’t require one to be a member to access the list, the number of member institutions would go down. Presumably there are a lot of institutions which would cancel their membership if the list were free. The subscription rates here are confusing, and a bit complicated as the relationship to the ADE and the ADFL make it even messier. But on the about the JIL page you can read about the policies. Looking at the recent 990 though it is pretty clear that membership and subscription to the JIL is a pretty large chunk of income for the MLA. (It’s not clear to me how much of the income is subscription and how much membership. I am not a forensic accountant and I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but the numbers are large see 4a-4c.)

Clearly the motivation here is for the MLA to make money both by insuring that those who use the list to post a job, and that graduate programs that use the list to help students get placed pay for access. But it also is pretty clear to me that they make more money off the list than it costs them to run it. In other words they are using the list to leverage institutional buy-in. The list serves as a motivation for an institution to join the MLA and support its efforts.

Before we go any further let me say again that I support the MLA. I think it has a worthy mission, that it does a lot of good work as an advocacy group on behalf of professors (see the role it played it resisting Foreign Language Cut Backs). And indeed in the job market the MLA probably plays a good regulatory role, setting norms of behavior that are in the best interests of the candidates (for example institutions have to agree to a certain set of standards and behaviors to use the MLA). So the MLA clearly provides a service to the community. But that doesn’t mean that the ability to access the list is a service that job seekers ought to pay for.

The MLA wants to claim that the list is a service provided to members, join the MLA and this is one of the benefits. But that’s not at all what is going on here. Instead the MLA has set itself up as the primary knowledge broker in the trafficking of information about jobs. What the MLA has is the place that job listers post because it is the place that job seekers (at least in MLA fields) go to find jobs. And because it has this important informational resource of the job list it is able to use it to leverage institutional support (AKA make graduate institutes who want to help students find jobs pay for access and/or membership). This isn’t a service, this is holding information hostage.

To see how this is the case imagine the MLA job list went poof tomorrow, as in completely disappeared, as in wipe the site off the internet, burn all the print editions, the JIL is no more. What long term effect would this have on job seekers? None. Why? Because the jobs listings would move elsewhere, The Chronicle, Inside Higher Ed, HigherEdJobs, heck even Monster.com. All places where job listers have to pay but job seekers would have free access. In other words to a large degree job seekers would be better off if the list just disappeared. Consider also how other professional organizations such as the American Historical Association and the American Mathematical Association provide free access to the list for job seekers, only charging to list a job.

Why then is the MLA locking down this knowledge? Indeed the MLA recently has made moves to open access knowledge, giving authors open access rights over articles published in the MLA. So it is odd then that the MLA would chose to lock down information they didn’t even produce. In this case the job ads are all authored by institutions, the MLA merely curates the database. What is particularly vexing about this situation is as the cost of distribution has gone down the price of access has gone up. Clearly the MLA makes more money than it spends on this list, it is using the list to fund operations, using its position and control over the list to force other institutions to pay the rates it dictates both to list jobs(fine with me) and to access (a far more spurious endeavor).

I get it, the MLA is invested in preserving the current job ecosystem where it serves as the broker, and collects on both sides, being a knowledge cartel is a good racket. But that doesn’t make it ethical or justifiable.

So when you raise this, what is the response of the MLA? Well they will claim that everyone who needs access has access. But as many have pointed out, there are hosts of contingent faculty, faculty who have been away from the market, who aren’t fresh out of grad school, who might not have such easy access. It isn’t precisely clear from the MLAs site that one is supposed to be able to access the job list via one’s graduate institution into perpetuity. Or the MLA will say that they will get access to anyone who needs it. But this also isn’t clear. Why not display a button, icon, or text that says “don’t have access, click here.” That would let job seekers without access fill out a form and gain access, sponsored by the MLA. The MLA is counting on the idea that graduate institutions will provide access to everyone, which is clearly not happening. For years there has been a sort of informal trading among individuals, where those with access share with those who don’t have it.

But more to the point is it is ridiculous to on the one hand require paid registration, and then on the other hand say everyone has access. Paid access is by definition a gate keeping function meant to restrict access. The logical fallacy here is large enough to drive a truck full of rhetoric professors through. Either everyone has access, or the MLA gatekeepers the list. Right now they are acting as gatekeepers even if they want to claim that everyone has access. (P.S. Doesn’t the fact that the MLA describes the .pdf list published in Oct & Dec as “open” serve as an admission that they recognize that the online database is not open?)

I realize the MLA’s business model is based (in part) on profiting from this list, but revenue is not an excuse to act unethically. But even more the MLA is missing an opportunity here. A list which is open to all job seekers is far more valuable in the long run than one that is closed. If you are a job lister you want your job to be published to the widest possible audience. An open list with a larger viewership is more valuable to those listing positions, and as they realize this they are likely to move to posting the jobs in places that aren’t locked. If you were a department and only had the financial means to post the job in one place, would it be in a list with limited viewership or one with open access? And increasingly job openings are becoming open by proxy, as places like the AcademicJobWiki or social media are used to share jobs, nearly all jobs are listed on the home institutions website. So, what the MLA does is curate these jobs, and if someone else can do this for better, for cheaper, and provide access to more jobseekers the MLA is rapidly going to be obsolesced. And if the MLA ceases to be the place where job seekers go, and hence job listers go they will lose leverage over recommended hiring practices etc. (a place they are providing a service).

A Better Way Forward

From a strategic point of view it makes more sense to play the long game here and open up the list, serving as the aggregator for all English jobs. Charge job listers, not seekers to have the job listed. Open up the database, heck even make an API so others can use the data. Imagine what could be done, what job seekers could do: Create a mash-up of the data with google maps so you could see ads by geographic location, or someone could write a program that would allow you to look for jobs as an academic couple (jobs in nearby geographic areas), something Inside Higher Education already does.

Let me re-iterate, a business model is not justification for closing access, not merely because this is an outmoded model likely to lose purchase in the coming years, but because it is a model that often hurts the most marginalized of our community. Academic knowledge exchange is changing, and with it should change our professional practices, and advocacy institutions. No one understood this better than the MLA when they hired Kathleen Fitzpatrick to be the director of scholarly communications. Kathleen is most famous for a call to perform digital scholarship to leverage the digital to alter our institutional practices lest we face obsolescence. Which I think many would agree is what is going on here with the job list.

(Copied from a Facebook Discussion on Scott Eric Kaufman’s Page):

Note: Subsequent to this discussion, a group of english academics launched mlajobleaks.com, which makes the job list available to anyone. Let me say that although I have been accused of being the mastermind behind this project I am not. While I might know the parties involved, and might even have provided “material support.” I shouldn’t be given credit (or blame) for this. However I encourage all the parties involved there, and hope that the list continues to be publicly available.

Ending Knowledge Cartels.

2012-06-06T12:36:09Z

10 (Mostly) Simple Steps.

Last month I had the privilege of speaking to the annual Computers in Writing Conference. The organizers were interested in hearing my perspective on open scholarship and the university.

I am not going to recast my entire presentation here, I actually might write it up as an article for something else, but the keynote is a different genre from a blog post and different from a formal essay so just making the written version of my talk available is probably not so useful.

But to briefly summarize I made the claim that increasingly academic interests are running counter to that of the publishing industry. And that while I find recent calls to move towards open scholarship such as the Harvard Letter important, I think that economic justification is not the primary reason we ought to pursue open scholarship. In short I think this is a moral issue. Knowledge Cartels are increasingly controlling, and restricting knowledge production and dissemination. This is happening broadly across our culture but the universities complicity in this, from drug patents to for profit publishing is troubling.

I am not going to rehash the long argument here, if you want you can watch the video. Instead, building on the idea that this is the moment to move to open access, I want to highlight the how-to portion of my talk, the ten steps to breaking up the knowledge cartels.

To me it is simple, we have a bizarre situation where we give away our product for free to these cartels who then turn around and sell it back to us. We give away our knowledge for free the only question is do we want to give it away to the public or to the cartels. Overcoming the knowledge cartels in the academy is simply a collective action problem. That is all we have to do is act together. Acting alone has costs, but if we collectively resist the cartels we solve the problem. To be sure there are complex solutions needed to replace the cartels, but the first step is overcoming them—which is shockingly simple. I offer 10 steps to take to achieve this goal.

1. Creative Commons License Everything. I said at the talk, and I would re-iterate here, this is the most important step, in fact this one simple act of licensing everything we do under creative commons would go a long way to undermining the cartels that profit from controlling our knowledge. Creative Commons essentially bequeaths your work to the commons, insuring that it cannot be locked down. There is a degree of control here where the originator of the work can decide whether or not someone can re-use for commercial purposes or non-commericial purposes only, or whether to allow remixes, or only those who maintain the entiritery of the original. But importantly it insures that the knowledge will enter the commons. We should license everything we do—syllabi, talks, books, journal articles—under creative commons.

2. Publish only via Open Access Sources. This is pretty simple we already give our work away for free, the question is to whom should we give it away. Giving it away to the public produces a better knowledge commons, as serves the public not the corporations. Knowledge which isn’t public, isn’t knowledge.

3. Refuse to Work for the Gated Publishers. In addition to our writing labor which we are giving away for free, academics are providing other labor to these publishers, for free. Stop it. Stop serving on the boards for these journals, stop peer reviewing them. No more sharing with them our free labor. If you get an email asking you to serve one of these rolls, your first response should be, “under what license will this publication be made available.” If the answer does not entail some method of open access turn them down and tell them why you are doing it. Recently I received two emails, one requesting that I review an article for a journal and another asking that I serve as a reader for a book. My first question in both cases was, is this open access. In the case of the article the journal issue was, I happily agreed. The book however was not. I turned them down, and made it very clear to them why I was doing it.

4.Actively Support Open Access. The corollary to the prior point is to actively seek out and work for Open Access distribution models. One of the myths about open access is that the work is not peer reviewed, that the quality is less. Of course this is absurd nothing about an open model indicates diminished quality, or suggests that an article cannot be peer reviewed. Indeed there are many models out there (I’ll just recommend Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s book for an in depth discussion of this). So at this crucial moment, when these initiatives are developing they can use the support of faculty, both to lend them intellectual gravitas and simply as a show of support. Serve as editors, readers, peer reviewers, board members.

5. Do this regardless of rank. I think this is the point which during my keynote received some of the strongest push back. I used to think that the best path was to call on full and associate professors to lead the way, moving to open access being too great a risk for the contigent labor, the grad students, and junior faculty. But a few things changed my mind on this. First since this is a collective action problem the greater the numbers the greater the shift, and a sudden move by untenured faculty would signal a subtantial shift. Second the urgency of pressing our case means that waiting for a slow change isn’t really the best option. And finally, I am not sure we can count on the tenured faculty. Faculty who don’t do something before tenure aren’t likely to change after. I am up for tenure this year, we will see how this goes, but as a colleague of mine Jon Becker says this is “a hill worth dying on.”

6. Make Open Access Part of A Criteria in Institutional Decisions. If you are on a hiring committee, ask the candidate if they are published in any open access sources. If they are not ask them why not, hire people who are committed to open access, make this part of your hiring criteria. Same for tenure committees and tenure review. For those with this kind of influence get open access mentioned in tenure guidelines, and again reward it during tenure and promotion evaluations. By doing so you will make it easier for junior colleagues to take the risks I outlined above.

7. Make these Choice Public. Part of the way that we overcome the collective action problem here is to publicly commit to Open Access, to not only make the moral choice, but to testify to this choice, making it easier for others to do the same. Sign Petitions such as “the cost of knowledge,” or the WhiteHouse.gov petition demanding open access to taxpayer funded research. Write in whatever venue available to you that you are making the move to open access, explain why, encourage others to join. When a knowledge cartel asks you to work for them, as an editor a reviewer or article writer, explain to them why you won’t do it, and then make that refusal public. So when Routledge asks you to review a book (as they recently did with me) tell them no, and then tell everyone that you told them no. This has the double advantage of communicating to the original author that if they want their submission reviewed they should agree to open access up front.

8. Extend this Principle to All Institutional Choices. I realize much of the focus about open access centers around our scholarship, but syllabi, lesson plans, teaching techniques are equally as valuable to the commons. There is no reason things like textbooks need to be expensive. These should be free and open, available to all. The textbook market is perhaps one of the biggest rackets in the academic publishing industry. And for the love of all that is holy stop using proprietary software and other systems in our classrooms that encourage these Knowledge Cartels. Even if this software were well built (which it isn’t) pedagogically and ethically using them is wrong. Ideologically systems like BlackBoard are just another piece of this problem. Go open source with our learning tools, stop letting these knowledge cartels profit from education.

9. Exert pressure on professional institutions. MLA, ASA, CCCC whatever professional organizations you are part of, whatever conferences you are part of, make them aware of your demand for open access, and get them to tak in that direction. Because pressuring these institutions works.

10. Pirate. Stop respecting the rights of the knowledge cartels. The knowledge they have locked down is ours, not theirs, do not recognize their right to it. If someone wants something that is locked down behind a paywall, share it with them, copy, distribute, don’t respect the copyright of these cartels.

Again this is simply a collective action problem, all it takes is for us as academics to stand up and say enough. Indeed any other choice not only harms our collective interest, but more importantly the interests of public which we serve. Open Access is the only ethical choice.