iClass: A Professor In Your Pocket
posted by Guest Editor  on 5/2/06 4:57 PM
 With every cool new toy—whether CD burners, camera phones, or MySpace—the old folks eventually catch on. That shiny iPod your parents bought for your birthday has officially crossed over, and thanks to recent initiatives at a growing number of universities, it might teach you something besides Pearl Jam's bootleg catalogue. Delivering lectures and other class material through an online podcast, called "coursecasting," has been gaining steam, with both Duke and American universities holding separate conferences in the fall of 2005 to discuss the trend. Downloading lectures can help you review for exams, catch up on missed classes, or comprehend English as a non-native language.
Plenty of questions remain unanswered about whether coursecasting will give students an excuse to skip their live classes or if it's wise for professors to make their course content available online in an age of digital-rights debacles. Regardless, the projects are evolving, joining Best Buy's aisle full of white accessories as proof that iPod's grip on the American psyche won't be loosening anytime soon.
Ashley Amphipathic, Emily Exocytosis, Ryan Polyrobisome, and Blake Blastomere
Purdue University, noted as a frontrunner in the iClass revolution, has more than seventy spaces across campus wired for immediate recording and lists more than sixty course feeds as part of its coursecasting program, dubbed "Boilercast." Biology professor Laurie Iten has already taken the technology to the next level, creating video podcasts to aid students in four of her incoming-level classes. During short cartoons, characters with South Park style and scientific surnames make common biolab mistakes so students don't have to. "Flash Forward" segments available before class run through a lab project's basic procedures and common missteps, and similar "Rewind" segments review the previous lesson.
"The more zany you get, the more the students like it," Iten says. "They're actually kind of surprised learning can be fun." Hence, Blake Blastomere occasionally dons a super villain's costume, and Phil the Presumptive Physician dies in every episode.
"Not to be derogatory, but they have the attention span of a gnat," Iten says. "Podcasts and short online tutorials are the way to get information to them in the way they want."
Apple's iLife software provides Iten with the tools for her podcasts at a relatively low cost after an educational discount. "It gives you just about everything you need for forty bucks," she says. "The most time spent is working on the content of the podcasts, not producing them. We always try to build podcasts that can be reused; therefore, they should make our workload lighter."
Speaking of workload, the big question is whether students are willing to add to their own. Iten doesn't know how many of her students took advantage of the "Rewind/Flash Forward" casts, and Purdue freshman Michael Patzer—who found the visual-learning approach of the biology podcasts helpful—says the general trend of coursecasting has yet to take over campus.
"I would say half of the students know about it, and most do not use it," he says. "Usually if someone can't take an hour to go to class, they can't take an hour to sit and listen to a lecture. I think the way my biology class uses it, as a short ten-minute preparatory tool, is probably the best way."
Give us your thoughts on coursecasting:
Does teaching need to adapt to the shorter attention span of a media-inundated generation?
Do you see yourself strolling around campus listening to a psych lecture?
Will this trend of portable education stick around, or is it just a fad inspired by America's favorite gadget?
— Steve Marzolf
Rethinking the Importance of the SAT
posted by Esther on 3/23/06 3:52 PM
 Today brings more news on the SAT-scoring fiasco front: Once again, the College Board has admitted that the number of those affected by misscored tests are even higher than previously reported. The CB and Pearson Educational Measurement, the institution that's responsible for scanning the SAT answer keys, said today that there still remains a stash of 27,000 tests that have yet to be double-checked for errors.
Today's announcement means that 400 more students will be notified via email that they deserve a higher score than originally received. As for those students who were mistakenly marked higher than they should have been—that number has gone up to 600.
For those of you who are new to this astounding SAT crisis that is currently unfolding before our eyes, we'll catch you up:
Back on March 8th, the CB announced that there were a number of students who, due to some unknown technical scanning error, are owed as much as 100 points more on their SAT exams. Then, on March 9th, the CB slapped the public with an additional revelation: some test takers deserve a whopping 400 points more. (You can read the full SparkLife report here.) Then there's today's news. According to the CB site, the total number of people who will be receiving higher scores is 4,411. Of the 495,000 exam takers in October 2005, about .009 percent will be contacted about the increase in their scores. The 4,411 only includes those who will be alotted more points, and not those who experienced an increase in their score due to the CB's error. This may seem like a miniscule percentage to some, but the exact statistics of this catastrophe should not overshadow the significance of what this means for standardized testing. Most of us may be pretty clueless as to how much SAT scores matter in the scheme of getting accepted to the college of your dreams, but the pressure and stress involved in preparing and taking the SATs is no mystery.
Over time, the SATs have become much more than a reflection of a how a test taker will measure up in college; they've become the be all and end all of a student's post-high school potential. As if the heated competitiveness associated with high school grades isn't hard enough, standardized tests like the SATs only expand the cutthroat atmosphere to a national level. Furthermore, with the current U.S. government's education reforms, standardized testing has expanded by leaps and bounds to elementary schools and beyond.
The heavy reliance associated with the SATs on the part of educators, students, college admissions offices, test prep companies, and even the government can sometimes deceive us to assume that exam results are an accurate reflection of a student's intelligence. The far-reaching effects of the CB's errors should make us rethink how much good comes out of attributing such a vast amount of authority to one multiple-choice exam. The latest headlines make us realize that even the almighty CB sometimes makes mistakes. They're fallible just like the rest of us—and maybe it's time to admit that standardized testing as a whole can be described in the same way.
Sound off. We want to hear your thoughts about this College Board debacle.
Do we give too much weight to SATs?
What are the advantages to having standardized testing?
Can anything be done to improve the system?
Breaking News: SAT Scores Mistakenly Lowered
posted by Esther on 3/8/06 11:56 AM
 If you haven't heard already, have we got news for you: Applicants who have received rejection letters from their college of choice may just have a chance at being accepted. An article in this morning's New York Times reports that the College Board misgraded about 4,000 SATs taken by students last October. According to the article, some grades were marked as much as 100 points lower than they should have been.
The College Board said the inaccurate scoring was due to "technical problems in the scoring process" and that they would be refunding students' test registration fees.
With this headline coming right in the middle of college admissions season, the College Board has been busy notifying universities of their colossal mistake. Some of the letters written include a plee to the schools asking that students not be "penalized for a matter that was beyond their control."
What's really astounding everyone about the mistake is how long it took the College Board to go public with this huge scoring mishap. The news will definitely put many college admissions offices to work, as they will have to rethink and re-evaluate who they accept for the fall semester.
Were you burned by the College Board? Tell us all about it.
Update:
3/9/06
And the SAT saga goes on...
Turns out, yesterday's headline was only an understatement of how signficant of an error the College Board has made. Today's news reports that some students' SAT scores are off by as much as 400 points—and not the originally reported 100-point error. This is an even bigger blow to both students and college admissions departments who weigh heavily on SAT grades.
Otherwise, the College Board is continuing its efforts to locate the cause of this whole disaster.
Anyone happy to hear that they've actually scored higher than they thought they did?
How to Write an Essay
posted by Margo on 1/18/06 4:39 PM
Need a vacation? Consider entering Oprah's essay-writing contest. If you can create a thoughtful, well-argued essay about why Elie Wiesel's book Night is relevant today, you could win a trip for two to Chicago. To get started, take a look at these six quick tips on how to write a great essay, from our forthcoming book Ultimate Style: How to Write an Essay. 1. Brainstorm Ideas
You have the essay topic already—so your first step is to brainstorm ideas. What first comes to mind when you think about this book? Don't censor yourself—write down whatever comes to mind. Once you're tapped out, look at your list. You need to narrow it down so you have only two or three ideas that you'll focus on in your essay. For each idea you wrote down, ask yourself four questions:
- Is this idea important?
- Can this idea be argued with?
- Does this idea inspire you to write an essay?
- Is this idea unique?
Every time you answer "yes" to one of these questions, give the idea a star. By the time you've gone through your list, some ideas may have four stars, while some may have none. The ones with the most stars should be the ones you focus on in your essay.
2. Create a Thesis
A thesis statement is your opinion on the topic you're writing about. Based on the ideas you have from your brainstorming, what is your opinion? Write it out in a sentence. Your thesis should be clear and succinct (usually just one sentence), and it should appear near the beginning of your essay (you'll probably want to put it at the end of the first paragraph). The most important thing to remember when you create a thesis is that is must be something that can be argued with. If you don't have an argument, you don't have an essay.
3. Develop Your Arguments
Once you have an idea for what your thesis should be (you can always revise it later), you need to think about the arguments you'll use to support it. Go back to your list of ideas from your brainstorming. Can you use any of these ideas as arguments for your essay? Circle the possibilities. Then do another round of brainstorming, coming up with all the ways you might support your thesis if you were trying to defend it to a friend. In a 1,000-word essay like the Oprah contest, you should try to come up with three or four arguments. You won't have room for much more.
4. Outline Your Essay
Before you start writing, you should make an outline for your essay. Think this is an unnecessary step? Think again: when you create a detailed outline, half your essay-writing work is done for you. An outline helps you to clarify your ideas and figure out how they fit together. When you start writing, you have a roadmap—all you'll have to worry about is fleshing out these details in full sentences. Here's the basic structure for an outline:
- INTRODUCTION
- BODY
- First supporting argument
- Second supporting argument
- Third major supporting argument
- CONCLUSION
5. Write the First Draft
Don't wait until the night before the essay is due to get started! You should write your first draft a few days in advance so you have plenty of time to come back to it and revise. When you do sit down to write, stay focused. Keep your outline close by, and work your way through it. As you write, you may find additional arguments you want to make that aren't on your outline, and this is fine. But be sure to take a moment and work your new thoughts into your outline so you can keep everything organized. There are important things to keep in mind when you draft your essay:
Drafting the Introduction: Your introduction should tell your readers why your topic is important and give a little background information (not too much—you only have 1,000 words for your whole essay!). When you draft the introduction, imagine a funnel—it starts off wide and narrows down. Your introduction should do the same thing. It should start off wide, with background information, and end narrow, with your thesis statement.
Drafting the Body: The most important thing to remember when you're drafting the body of your essay is that every paragraph must start with a strong, clear topic sentence that tells your readers exactly what that paragraph will be about. Each paragraph may not necessarily be a brand-new argument—but regardless, every topic sentence should introduce the idea you'll present in that particular paragraph.
Drafting the Conclusion: Imagine a funnel again—but this time, imagine it upside down. Your conclusion should start narrow, with the ideas in your essay, and then widen out, to a larger idea. The best way to make your conclusion effective is to show the broader implications of your topic, or to discuss the direction your topic is likely to take in the future.
6. Revise Your Work
Revising your work involves making large changes, such as reorganizing arguments or revamping your introduction, as well as smaller (yet still very important) changes, such as cleaning up your grammar, rewriting sentences for sophistication and style, and creating the appropriate tone for your work. You've written down your ideas—and revising is how you make them shine.
My Freshman Year
posted by Justin on 10/20/05 11:21 AM
 In My Freshman Year, a book about college life by Rebekah Nathan, a student gets busted by her dorm supervisors for drinking beer in the student lounge. As any college student would, she quickly fumbles for excuses, apologizes profusely, and receives a threat of disciplinary action from her supervisor. But Rebekah Nathan isn't just another college kid chugging a late-night beer. She isn't even Rebekah Nathan. Her real name is Cathy Small, a professor of anthropology at Northern Arizona University, which her book refers to generically as "AnyU." After teaching anthropology for fifteen years at NAU, she began to feel disenchanted with higher education and with her students. But rather than call it quits, Professor Small did what any concerned anthropologist would do when faced with challenging questions about a particular culture-she decided to go into the "field" to study the problem by becoming one of the natives. My Freshman Year is the story of what she learned during a year spent entrenched as an actual first-year student at NAU, complete with a dorm room, a meal plan, and a full course load.
A fifty-plus professor going undercover as a college freshman may seem outrageous or even impossible, but Professor Small's book makes it clear that her outward appearance and identity were not the biggest obstacles she faced in going back to school. Instead, she found the burden of being a student alarmingly difficult and demanding, and she walked away from the experience with a newfound sense of compassion for her fellow faculty members and classmates.
Professor Small's undercover experiment and the anonymously published book that arose from it have caused quite a bit of controversy since the New York Sun revealed her identity in August, a few weeks before her book's publication. We spoke with Professor Small recently to get the story behind the book and the controversy, straight from the source. SparkNotes: What was your main goal in spending a year as a student at NAU, and do you think you achieved it?
Cathy Small: I wanted to get back in touch with my students. After fifteen years of teaching at "AnyU," I began to feel that I no longer understood the students in my classes. Why did they eat and, sometimes, sleep in class? Why didn't they come to office hours? Or do the reading for class? Undergraduates started to look like "a foreign culture" to me, so I did what an anthropologist would do and tried to understand that culture by living like a native.
Was I successful? In a personal sense, for sure. By walking in my students' shoes—taking classes, going to tutoring, riding the bus, living in the dorm—I saw what my students go through and it made me both more understanding and more respectful. After doing this, I felt I really wanted to teach freshmen again.
I hope my learning experience worked for my students too. Since being a freshman, I've changed my teaching. For instance, I teach a new course—The Anthropology of Everyday Life—that has more student-to-student interaction and discussion, "read-able" articles rather than textbooks, and more out-of-classroom exercises to connect academics to real life. I think students really like the change.
SN: The American media tends to portray college students as sex-crazed beer guzzlers who wake at noon to play video games. How accurate is this depiction of college student life today?
CS: Colleges have their fair share of beer, sex, and video games. But it is a real disservice to students to suggest that this alone is college life. I found that college students are subject to enormous pressures, and they are skillfully juggling issues of career, classes, volunteer work, identity, family life, jobs, and finances (and even laundry!) at the same time. For many freshmen, who are away from home for the first time, the multiple obligations along with the enormous freedom to choose can be daunting. College is much more a challenge than it is a party, and it takes balance to flourish there.
SN: You've had the rare chance to be a college student twice, decades apart. What's the most obvious way students and professors have changed in the time between your two freshman years?
CS:I get this question a lot because most people assume there have been major shifts. If pushed about differences, I'd call it this way: students now are (generally) more career-minded, and less political. Professors now are (generally) more lenient in the classroom, and more focused on their own research.
What's most surprising, though, is how similar it is. There are the same personal and parental pressures to do well, and the same peer pressures to act as if you're not taking school too seriously. Most students I met at AnyU privately say they came to college to learn. (You'd be surprised how many students would not simply take a degree if it were handed to them.) But what students say they learn is 65% outside of the classroom and 35% inside. I think if your parents (and even grandparents) were honest, they'd say that it really wasn't much different in their day.
SN: Several reviews posted on the Internet refer to your work as a betrayal to students and a misrepresentation of "true" anthropological research. One student reviewer from NAU says reading the book reminded her of "when I caught my mom going through my room and looking at my diary." How do you respond to students and fellow professors who consider your work unethical?
CS:The Internet is fantastic place, but it also contains a lot of misinformation—especially for a book that gets popular. Some bloggers make out as if I spied on students' private lives, and then wrote about them. More than fifty students did contribute stories and opinions to the book, and there isn't a single one that didn't give me written permission to do so. The so-called "NAU students" on a couple of Internet sites are bogus (including the author of the diary comment in your question)—at least, there aren't any students by that name according to the administration who have attended my university. So I figure they're just flaming. The real students who wrote about the book in our student newspaper had great things to say, and even wrote Rebekah Nathan (my penname) a public "thank you" letter as their editorial!
SN: In your book, you say the most important lesson you learned in becoming a student again was "compassion." What role should "compassion" have in improving education?
CS:I recently attended a teaching with the Dalai Lama. One of the audience members asked a question about what makes a good teacher-student relationship. The Dalai Lama answered simply: a student should have respect; a teacher should have compassion. I believe that. My year as a freshman reinforced that belief by putting me in touch with the complex lives that students live. I try to remember this when deciding whether to accept a late paper, or whether to send a personal email to a student not showing for class that says: Are you okay?
In the end, kindness works better in teaching than fear, and interest is a better motivator than the threat of bad grades. There is a time and place for a "kick in the pants" in academic life, but I think more students learn more in an atmosphere of support.
SN: Based on your freshman experience, what advice you would offer to today's typical college student? And to today's typical college professor?
CS: To the college student I'd say: don't compromise yourself—either to school pressures or peer pressures. There's always a way to do what you want to do. If you're getting bored in big survey classes, sign up for an elective seminar or an internship; if the class you want is full, ask the professor early (not at the last minute) to consider letting you in; if there's too much drinking and not enough discussion at your college, try a semester overseas. If you're spending too much time alone in your room, pick a club to join—and stick with it! You can find what you want in college (and in life), but you have to make it happen.
To the college professor I'd say: don't take it personally. When a student nods off in class or never comes to an office hour, it is much more about his or her life and student culture than about your teaching. As teachers, we talk about wanting our students to develop their sense of commitment and compassion in life. What better way to teach that than to offer it? |
