Internet Identities Part I Faculty

According to Inside Higher Ed, Instructor John Hall from the University of Florida was participating in a distance learning course that videotaped lectures and made them available online for students enrolled in the course. Clips from one of the classes were uploaded on websites such as break.com and youtube.com under the title ‘Stoned Professor,’ shortly after the lecture. Since then Prof. Hall has been put on paid administrative leave and the course has been taken over by someone else. Once voted teacher of the year, Hall now has his future employment with the University of Florida, “Under consideration.”

While I think this is a very important topic, I was disappointed in this article. The author never asked why Hall was put on leave. There is a distinct difference between putting an instructor on leave because they were stoned, because an investigation into their drug habits is underway, because the university doesn’t approve of the current teaching method, and because he was the center of too much negative student attention. What the reader is left with is that he was put on leave because some unknown student said online that he was stoned.

Unlike many YouTube.com videos of professors, this one was being filmed intentionally by the University and the instructor was well aware that he was on camera. I wish that this author would have talked about what criteria or assessment the university uses when they decide which course to video tape. Is someone reviewing these lectures before they are put online? Was Belinda (the woman referenced in the clip as in charge of the zooming) concerned with Hall’s 'performance' on this day? Hall’s CV and his presence on the University of Florida online directory are impressive. Even his ratings on ratemyprofessor.com are good (based on the rumor that instructors want an average rating because a good rating is a signal that your classes are too easy).

This all leads to a soapbox that I probably frequent too often about faculty keeping up with the online identity that students are creating for them. Students are posting extensively edited and elaborately planned videos of their professors as a new hobby. When a faculty member's course is being represented online with videos of the students struggling to stay awake during lecture, that faculty member now has a negative online identity. It doesn't matter if it is only two minutes, because it is the only two minutes many people will ever see of that lecture. As Ann Springer said in an article about faculty being filmed with out their knowledge for youtube.com, “Students will always mock professors and there is nothing you can do about that.” However, with students embracing new technologies and mocking professors for an audience of strangers that will never have the opportunity to interact with the instructor or experience one of her lectures, the mocking has become much more powerful. Student mocking is now being electronically published and the lines separating student banter from slander and libel are getting awfully close together.

If a precedent is started that faculty members can loose their jobs based on this internet mocking, it means there could be a scary power shift that gives advantages to those who know how to Google. Lately faculty and mentors have been eager to point out that our future employers will be looking at our facebook accounts and judging us, but there is the possibility that the university is also looking at our facebook, and they are judging the faculty by what we say. I'm not saying that faculty have to become avid facebookers or should be reading the blogs of every student they encounter, but they need to keep in mind that avoiding the internet does not keep them from developing an online identity. Faculty need to be keeping track of where their names and their classes are popping up online. Not only for the CYOA theory, but there is also the possibility that it is some of the most honest feedback you'll ever get.

My Degree and My Debt

I was reading this article when I noticed the statement that, "the average student now graduates with $17,500 in student loan debt." It doesn't seem that hard to know why that is, but I'm wondering if there is just a whole different approach we should be taking. Students have never been able to afford college. However, one of the major differences is that in the 17, 18 and early 19 hundreds students were just skipping the bill. Now we carry around our debt for years. I'm not suggesting a grassroots movement that inspires students everywhere to dodge thier debt collectors, but if tuition for students doesn't work and has never worked, maybe it needs to be reassessed from top to bottom.

According to this simple College Cost Calculator, a high school freshman right now can expect to pay $90,591.93 for college. If that freshman starts working at 14 (when it becomes legal) for $7 an hour and 20 hours a week over the next 4 years she will earn $26,880. If she continues to work at the same rate through four years of college she will earn a total of $53,760. That student is short $36,831.93. She almost earned 60% of what she needs. Of course this doesn't take into account any living costs that she may have such as the car or the gas to get to this job. I could go on but there is no need to. We are knowingly marketing and selling a service to customers that cannot afford it. That is unethical.

I understand the importance of the commercial approach and that marketing universities supports the quality and diversity that we have in our country. I also understand that the students are people receiving the services rendered, but all of our campus programming on being responsible with a credit cards and staying out of debt seems ironic and perhaps a bit hypocritical given the situation we are putting them in.

During a discussion with one of my instructors she mentioned that tuition made up 15% or less of the University's budget. I don't have documentation for this but if it is true, we are expecting student to take out loans, be awarded scholarships, and work part time to provide us with only 15% of our budget. It doesn't seem like much to ask but it is enough to jeopardize their grades both in high school and college, cause them extra stress and anxiety, and edge them in to counseling (financial and mental). It has the potential to keep them from engaging in their community, visiting with their faculty, or even coming to college in the first place.

I don't know what the solution is. Maybe we should cut 15% of our budget. It's not a task I would want, but it wouldn't be the first or the last time a business has done it. Maybe employers should be recruiting students the same way sport coaches do, and whichever employer is lucky enough to get me is also lucky enough to pay off my debt. Maybe every potential student in the country should be given vouchers that equal the average cost of college. If they want to go somewhere more expensive then they should start worrying about scholarships and loans. It may be crazy talk, but crazy talk may be just what we need. This problem has been around for hundreds of years, we have to completely abandon the box in order to find an answer.

The Collegiate Experience

As a writer concerned with the current events of higher education, it is only appropriate that I comment on the recent speech by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. Unfortunately, I feel like I am entering in the middle of this discussion, and I am not ready to begin participating in it. Instead I'm simply going to offer you some article links and talk about something else.
The Spellings Plan
The Sounds of Conciliation
In Focus: The Spellings Commission

Instead of Spellings, I want to talk some more about the implications of Course casting. I know that I've already posted on this, but I just can't get over the excitement of what it all could mean. Everything to follow is my personal and probably overly optimistic hopes for the changes that would follow the widespread availability of quality courses online with audio visual components.

If the content of a course is available free for everyone, what are the students who decide to pay to be there really wanting? They want the Collegiate Experience. Without lectures what is the collegiate experience? It is going to a place where experts of the field congregate. It is mentorship and networking. It is access to lab equipment and primary resources. It is peer discussions and study groups. It is RSOs and football games. It is the cafeteria and the local hangouts. It is living with strangers and making new friends. It is leaving home and growing up. It is the whole student.

I'm sorry I got a bit carried away there. What does this emphasis on experience mean? Well in my ideal future, there will no longer be lecture halls full of 50+ students. Faculty will be leading smaller classes where the group spends more time working with the content than they do trying to absorb it. Learning communities will have a surge of popularity, and faculty involvement outside the classroom will be expected.

Eventually everything will level out. One of the perks of American Higher Education is it's diversity. There will be colleges with huge lecture halls and there will be colleges that offer the experience emphasis. What might change for good is which one is considered mainstream.

We're getting better?

Here is the Arkansas report card from Measuring Up the National Report Card on Higher Education.

Preparation D+ (Improvement)*
Participation C (Improvement)
Affordability F (Minimal Improvement)
Completion C (Improvement)
Benefits C (Improvement)

“Arkansas’ underperformance in educating its young population could limit the state’s access to a competitive workforce and weaken its economy over time. The proportion of 9th graders graduating in four years has declined since the early 1990s. Moreover, relatively few students who do graduate are adequately prepared to succeed in college compared with leading states. In addition, Arkansas trails other states in providing college-level education and training opportunities for working-age adults. Since the early 1990s, four-year colleges and universities in Arkansas have become less affordable for students and their families. If these trends are not addressed, they could undermine the state’s ability to compete successfully in a global economy.”

According to the 2006 report we are improving, but here are the grades from 2004:

Preparation C
Participation C-
Affordability F
Completion C
Benefits D+

*Improvement indicates change over time

Good News for Good Will Hunting

According to this article, The Next Level of Open Source Yale is going to start video tapping course lectures and making them publicly available online. They are not the first to do it, in fact MIT has been offering it since 2001. They offer syllabi, reading references, lecture notes, and even assignment and project descriptions. There is no reason why a self-motivated, self-teacher couldn't couldn't take full classes online. If this trend continues, what kind of changes will happen in higher education?

What will this transparency will mean. What will happen when someone compares Fundamentals of Physics offered at UCA to Fundamentals of Physics at Yale? Will UCA instructors be expected to make their course comparable to Yale's? What if UCA is better, would Yale be tarnished? What if a student doesn't like their professor? Can they find a different professor online and opt to take that course instead?

What does this mean for my resume? Right now I fill the special training section of my resume with UCA course titles that are relevant to the job I'm applying for. Can I put OCW (OpenCourseWare) courses on there as well? Will my potential employer see me as self-motivated or will they think that it's irrelevant since there is no way to determine that I understood and processed the information I took in? What if my employer starts expecting it? As a college student I'm suppose to be self-motivated and self-teaching. Per class I'm suppose to spend two to three hours working outside of the classroom. Supposedly I'm already good at taking online courses because the majority of my college experience was happening on my own. That means I have little excuse for not self teaching during breaks. Along those same lines, are students who can't afford college expected to self-teach online? Will a day come where retail management positions require OCW business courses?

The most obvious questions, what will happen to my classes? If everyone can receive the same education, why should I pay for it? Am I still paying for the education, or am I paying for the test? Can they charge that much for a grade? Will the lecture become part of the homework? Will I have the right to demand that my in class experience goes above and beyond what everyone else gets for free? Will college become more about the experience and less about the investment?

This last question is one of the most exciting to me. When the first colleges were founded in Colonial America, they didn't always make the most economic sense. In that agricultural society, there was little reason to let your son leave the farm to learn Greek and Latin. Colleges were providing an experience that was intended to create good citizens and good leaders. Unfortunately, as colleges became more accessible, they also became an investment. We've reached a point where we know exactly how much more a person will earn in their lifetime based on each degree they have. It could probably be argued, that now the experience has very little to do with the courses. If these Open Source Courses take off, we could have education available to all, and the experience available to many.

I’ve been blogged!

To step away from the ‘my life in Higher Ed’ theme and focus a bit more on just the ‘my life’ theme, I’ve been blogged. You may have visited the Rathbone Images link on my sidebar and seen some beautiful pictures of mainly of weddings. Well now, some beautiful pictures from my wedding are there.

My husband (Mike) and I got married in Seattle and Rathbone Images did our photography. They are an incredibly wonderful couple who were just great to have participating. A few weeks after the wedding, they gave me a sneak peek at our pictures and they instantly became two of my favorite people and one of my favorite businesses. I am one of the luckiest women in the world because my wedding exceeded all of my expectations. Keri at Bliss Events made it better than what I had envisioned perfect to be, and Bob and Priscilla captured that. Everyone who sees our pictures understands just how amazing the day was. I’ve lost count of how many people have cried, or struggled not to, while looking at the pictures they put up for us online.

They are amazing people and someday when we move back to Seattle, I’ll have to see about making them our friends instead of our photographers.

Things Taken for Granted

"We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, and there fore do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender, age or disability."

I admit I've completely taken these words for granted. This phrase has been grouped in with Miranda Rights, the surgeon general's warning, and flight attendants' instructions on how to use my seat cushion as a flotation device. I hear it all the time, but I've stopped listening to it, and I've started assuming too much.

I've never thought about where it comes from. If I had thought about it I probably would have just assumed that there is a law or policy somewhere that organizations just copy into their handbooks and manuals. While that is often the case, things can get hazy as we transition between federal employees through state institutions to private businesses. For more information check out the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity laws, but that is not exactly what I want to talk about right now. The reason that I'm disappointed in myself that I didn't know where it came from is because to follow through with that, I didn't think about who updates it. While I was taking this phrase for granted, I happily assumed that it was updated in a timely fashion all across the country. I was startled yesterday to find out that I was very wrong.

Yesterday this article, Inside Higher Ed Article found it's way to my inbox. On Friday Missouri State University added sexual orientation to the list of barred biases. In other words, as of Friday it is no long acceptable to discriminate against students or employees based on their sexual orientation. I was disappointed in Missouri when I heard this. In my head they should have updated back when everybody else did. I'm not certain when that actually happened, but I know that major corporations are offering benefits for same sex partners so certainly that's already been revised. Ok you can look now. Go back to the quote at the top... that's right it's not their either, but I assumed it would be. That wording was taken from my university's staff handbook and matches the information on the FEEO website. (To UCA's credit our student handbook does have a policy protecting students from discrimination.)

Missouri State University has received a considerable amount of attention and a lot of flack on the topic because of how clearly biased the former president was, but I'm not certain how I should feel. I want to be embarrassed that it took them so long, and I want to scold the board for not setting their president straight. I want to be angry that even after that president left it was a 5-3 vote. Then I look at the numbers they rank with. According to the article, "Missouri State joins hundreds of colleges — 562 according to the latest study by the Human Rights Campaign — that bar bias based on sexual orientation." That seems good but it's the most disturbing point of the entire article. I found out in class a couple weeks ago that in 2003 there were about 4,500 accredited institutions awarding degrees. I am sad that of 4,500, only 562 are barring sexual orientation discrimination.

Something else to think about...

(Brought to my attention by the enviably articulate Michael Herring)

To continue on with the assumptions I was so naively making, I thought this was just about protecting people from discrimination. As it turns out, refusing to let people discriminate is in its self a form of discrimination: Christians Sue for Right Not to Tolerate Policies. This issue of this article is that religious views are being discriminated against if people are forced to accept everyone. Is it unfair to force a Christian student organization to accept homosexual members? or is it unfair to tell homosexual students that they can't be in Christian organizations?