Category: <span>Writing</span>

Back to the (Future of the) Single Task

June 1, 2011 1:43 pm \ 1 Comment \ by Ray Watkins

A decade ago those of us interested in computers and learning were convinced that multitasking, encouraged by the internet in particular, was going to change what it meant to be human. Everything had to be redesigned to encourage multitasking; we had to accept, we told ourselves, that our (younger) students would be even better at it, because they would know no work or play without it.

We were a little put off by the prospect of the world becoming utterly strange, but their ascendancy seemed inevitable. A handful of more scientific minded folk took these ideas very seriously and started devising experiments and tests to see if it were really true. The news is not good. I just listened to an interview with Clifford Nass, a sociologist at Stanford on the Canadian show Spark (Episode 142, here);

The evidence is clear, Nass says: our brains are not designed to multitask and the more we try to multitask the worse our cognitive performance becomes. More and more people are reporting that multitasking is unproductive and the single task has become daunting. We’ve unlearned concentration and focus, and Nass believes, we need to relearn how to keep our minds on a single task.

Posted in: Professional, Writing

Patapsco

May 30, 2011 10:03 am \ Leave a Comment \ by Ray Watkins

My Dad, who fought in WWII as a young man– a teenager, really– is buried in the National Cemetery in Houston, Texas. It makes sense, since this was the seminal event in his life. He drove a tank, and he managed to come back without any physical damage. I think, though, that the cliché is unavoidable: he was wounded in other ways and in important ways he never healed. I miss him– he’s been dead for nearly 30 years– but it’s hard to get sentimental about Memorial Day.

Or, rather, I can get sentimental about his life on Memorial Day, but not about the military or the country or war. It’s not fair to second guess him. If I were his age, and had heard about the dangers of Fascism, I might have made the same choice, and gone off to the grand adventure. I don’t what I would have chosen any more than I know if he made the right choice. I know the price was very high for his choice. I also think that the conscientious objectors at Patapsco had a point, too.

Posted in: Writing

Bring on the Regulations

May 25, 2011 2:28 pm \ Leave a Comment \ by Ray Watkins

Lot’s of people (in the U.S. anyway) tend to react badly when they hear the word “regulation.” That’s mostly thanks to a long right-wing campaign to undermine the very idea of government. Of course, without regulation we’d be drinking poisoned water or living in houses that might burn down or buying products that could kill us. In fact, logically, given the still emerging ramifications of global warming, or the ongoing crisis of the financial industry, here and in Europe, we don’t have enough regulation. Or, perhaps, we don’t have enough regulators. The for-profit industry should fight for a strong, adequately staffed regulatory system.

The for-profit sector is no more or less corrupt than the public, but the regulations outlined in “Accreditor to Offer New Model That Looks Into Corporate Practices of For-Profit Colleges” should be welcomed. A strong accreditation system, tailor-made for the for-profits, is a necessity.The current era of for-profit growth is rooted in the sheer number of students left out- or pushed out- of the pubic system. As the market matures over the next decade or so, this growth will slow to a crawl and students will become much more selective. When that happens, we will need strong accreditation systems to compete.

Posted in: Professional, Writing

Why Waste a Good Crisis?

May 18, 2011 9:28 am \ Leave a Comment \ by Ray Watkins

In a nutshell, here’s how we got to the point where most faculty members are non-tenure track or adjunct… One year, at any-university-you-choose, say, in 1980, there’s a student enrollment spike and the administration decides that it’s fine to expand the student body just a bit. Out goes the call to a handful of department chairs: you are hereby authorized to hire one or two adjunct teachers to handle the temporary influx of new students.

Now the department has the capacity to handle more students, or to cut down class sizes. So if the population spike goes away, no chair will willingly fire the new adjuncts. Fast forward a few decades. Over time these population spikes– or professors on extended sick leave or sabbatical or…– have happened more than a few times. Now the department has more adjunct faculty teaching so-called service courses than full-time professors. It’s established practice.

It’s almost impossible to imagine a dean, or a provost, much less a faculty chair, announcing that the (now) long-established practice of using adjuncts to teach many if not most undergraduate general education courses will be rolled back. That would mean that the university, always in dire straits financially, would have to hire lots of full-time faculty. There are plenty of people with Ph.D.’s who would love to have a job, of course (the university keeps churning out Ph.D.’s), but never mind.

Adjuncts, of course, can be great teachers, given training and support. But the slow, steady erosion of a university education system founded in tenured, full-time faculty has all sorts of ill effects. If you are an adjunct, can you keep up with your field? Can you conduct research or write? If you keep this background in mind, you’ll have the right historical context in mind when you read, “Universities Turn to Graduate Instructors to Clear Course Bottlenecks.”