Author Archives: chendric

Presentation on SoTL research re: peer feedback

In mid-November I gave a presentation at the SoTL Symposium in Banff, Alberta, Canada, sponsored by Mount Royal University.

It’s a little difficult to describe this complex research, so I’ll let my (long) abstract for the presentation tell at least part of the story.

750-word abstract

Title: Tracking a dose-response curve for peer feedback on writing

There is a good deal of research showing that peer feedback can contribute to improvements in student writing (Cho & MacArthur, 2010; Crossman & Kite, 2012). Though intuitively one might think that students would benefit most from receiving peer comments on their written work, several studies have shown that student writing benefits both from comments given as well as comments received–indeed, sometimes the former more than the latter (Li, Liu & Steckelberg, 2010; Cho & MacArthur, 2011).

There are, however, some gaps in the literature on the impact of peer feedback on improving student writing. First, most studies published on this topic consider the effect of peer feedback on revisions to a single essay, rather than on whether students use peer comments on one essay when writing another essay. Cho and MacArthur (2011) is an exception: the authors found that students who wrote reviews of writing samples by students in a past course produced better writing on a different topic than those who either only read those samples or who read something else. In addition, there is little research on what one might call a “dose-response” curve for the impact of peer feedback on student writing—how are the “doses” of peer feedback related to the “response” of improvement in writing? It could be that peer feedback is more effective in improving writing after a certain number of feedback sessions, and/or that there are diminishing returns after quite a few sessions.

To address these gaps in the literature, we designed a research study focusing on peer feedback in a first-year, writing intensive course at a large university in North America. In this course students write an essay every two weeks, and they meet every week for a full year in groups of four plus their professor to give comments on each others’ essays (the same group stays together for half or the full year, depending on the instructor). With between 20 and 22 such meetings per year, students get a heavy dose of peer feedback sessions, and this is a good opportunity to measure the dose-response curve mentioned above. We can also test the difference in the dose-response curve for the peer feedback groups that change halfway through the year versus those who remain the same over the year. Further, we can evaluate the degree to which students use comments given by others, as well as comments they give to others, on later essays.

While at times researchers try to gauge improvement in student work on the basis of peer feedback by looking at coarse evaluations of quality before and after peer feedback (e.g., Sullivan & Pratt, 1996; Braine, 2001), because many things besides peer feedback could go into improving the quality of student work, more specific links between what is said in peer feedback and changes in student work are preferable. Thus, we will compare each student’s later essays with comments given to them (and those they gave to others) on previous ones, to see if the comments are reflected in the later essays, using a process similar to that described in Hewett (2000).

During the 2013-2014 academic year we ran a pilot study with just one of those sections (sixteen students, out of whom thirteen agreed to participate), to refine our data collection and analysis methods. For the pilot program we collected ten essays from each of the students who agreed to participate, comments they received from their peers on those essays, as well as comments they gave to their peers. For each essay, students received comments from three other students plus the instructor. We will use the instructor comments to, first, see whether student comments begin to approach instructor comments over time, and to isolate those things that only students commented on (not the instructor) to see if students use those in their essays (or if they mainly focus on those things that the instructor said also).

In this session, the Principal Investigator will report on the results of this pilot study and what we have learned about dealing with such a large data set, whether we can see any patterns from this pilot group of thirteen students, and how we will design a larger study on the basis of these results.

 

It turned out that we were still in the process of coding all the data when I gave the presentation, so we don’t yet have full results. We have coded all the comments on all the essays (10 essays from 13 participants), but are still coding the essays themselves (had finished 10 essays each from 6 participants, so a total of 60 essays).

I’m not sure the slides themselves tell the whole story very clearly, but I’m happy to answer questions if anyone has any. I’m saving up writing a narrative about the results until we have the full results in (hopefully in a couple of months!).

We’re also putting in a grant proposal to run the study with a larger sample (didn’t get a grant last year we were trying to get…will try again this year).

Here are the slides!

Post on renewable assignments

Earlier this term I wrote a post for a blog on UBC’s “Flexible Learning” site, about “renewable assignments”: assignments that add value to the world beyond just earning students a mark, and that can be revised and remixed later by others (thus the “renewable” part).

I wanted to link to it here because this is the place where I keep track of a lot of my professional work and thoughts, and if I don’t have a link here I might forget where the other post is!

Here is it: “Renewable Assignments: Student Work Adding Value to the World“

E.T.A. Hoffmann, “The Sandman”

In Arts One last week, we read a number of texts by Freud, including “The Uncanny,” in which he discusses a short story by E.T.A. Hoffmann called “The Sandman.” Here’s a version of this short story, though it’s not the translation we read: http://germanstories.vcu.edu/hoffmann/sand_e.html

E.T.A. Hoffmann Self-portrait, public domain on Wikimedia Commons

E.T.A. Hoffmann Self-portrait, public domain on Wikimedia Commons

We used the version of the story in this book: Five Great German Short Stories, ed. Stanley Appelbaum. Dover, 1993.

We didn’t get a chance to talk about this story much at all in our seminar meetings last week, having spent all of our time on the assigned texts by Freud. And I am so intrigued by Hoffmann’s story (and yet still pretty confused) that I thought I’d try to write my way through to possibly feeling like I have a better handle on an interpretation.

Our Arts One theme this year is “Seeing and Knowing,” and “The Sandman” fits into this theme quite well with its emphasis on eyes and vision. I can’t give a short synopsis here without more or less explaining the whole story, so I’ll just refer anyone who wants an overview of the plot to the Wikipedia page.

This post will be less a worked-out interpretation of the story than a series of observations that might be useful for others working out an interpretation (or me doing so later).

Clara and Olimpia

There are interesting parallels and contrasts between these two, I think.

Clara

Clara is presented in her letter, and by the narrator, as having “a very bright mind capable of subtle distinctions” (65). Her name suggests clarity as well. The narrator speaks of her eyes in glowing terms, saying that poets and musicians said of them, “Can we look at the girl without having miraculous heavenly voices and instruments beam at us from her eyes and penetrate our inmost recesses, awakening and stirring everything there?” (65).

  • Not sure what to make of this, but this reminds me of how in Nathanael’s poem, Coppelius takes Clara’s eyes and throws them at his breast … (71).

Nathanael reacts badly to her “good common sense” (61), and accuses her brother Lothar of teaching her logic because he can’t imagine that she could be capable of such clear thinking otherwise; he tells Lothar to “let that go” (57)–yikes. What’s up with that? Nathanael doesn’t want an intelligent fiancée, perhaps?

Nathanael used to write stories that Clara would listen to and appreciate, but after the experience of Coppola coming into his life and reminding him of Coppelius, Nathanael’s stories become “gloomy, incomprehensible and formless,” as well as “boring,” and Clara no longer enjoyed listening. Nathanael starts to accuse her of being “cold” and “prosaic” (69), and then, after she tells him to throw his poem about they two and Coppelius into the first, he calls her a “damned lifeless automaton.”

Nathanael seems to think he is somehow expressing some deep poetic sensibility, seeing some real truths unavailable to “cold, prosaic people” (67, 69, 89). But to Clara his works have become prosaic themselves.

Olimpia

Jacquet-Droz Automata, by Wikimedia Commons user Rama, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0 France

Jacquet-Droz Automata, by Wikimedia Commons user Rama, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0 France

It becomes clear pretty early on that Olimpia is an automaton. Hoffmann doesn’t try to hide this for very long, I think. Unlike Clara, she is described by others as “taxed with total mindlessness”; even Spalanzani calls her “witless” (87). Though Nathanael calls Clara a “lifeless automaton,” it is of course truly Olimpia who is such.

Yet Olimpia, unlike Clara, appears to list attentively to Nathanael’s creative works. Where Clara finds them “boring,” Olimpia is the best listener Nathanael has ever had (91). Where Nathanael thinks Clara is cold and unfeeling, he sees Olimpia as expressing deep and powerful feelings of love and longing.

Of course, Olimpia is not really feeling anything; these feelings are being projected onto her by Nathanael.

So we have:

Clara Olimpia
intelligent, bright, capable of subtle distinctions witless
really loves N incapable of love, but N thinks loves him
N thinks cold, unfeeling, prosaic actually cold, unfeeling, but N thinks passionate
thinks N’s artworks dull, boring doesn’t think anything about N’s art, but N thinks she loves it as much as he does

Nathanael and Olimpia

There are hints throughout the text that Nathanael is or feels like an automaton:

  • In his first letter, when he is recounting the frightening encounter with Coppelius in his father’s room, he says that after Coppelius threatens to steal his eyes, he started unscrewing his hands and feet and trying to put them in different places, speaking about the “mechanism” of these appendages.  Coppelius puts them back where they were, saying,”The old man knew what he was doing!” (47). I’m still puzzling over who the “old man” here is (Spalanzani?)
  • When Nathanael comes home to visit his family and friends (after the letters in the beginning of the story), he is gripped by the conviction that free will is an illusion, that “every person, under the delusion of acting freely, was merely being used in a cruel game by dark powers …” (67). To me, this suggests that he feels he is not in control, that someone else is controlling him as if he were an automaton.
    • He even feels pulled to look at Olimpia through Coppola’s spyglass as if by “an irresistible force” (81)

 

It’s also pretty clear that when Nathanael falls in love with Olimpia, he is falling in love with a reflection of himself:

  • When he looks at her for the first time through Coppola’s telescope, at first her eyes seem “strangely rigid and dead. But as he looked through the glass more and more keenly, moist moonbeams appeared to radiate from Olimpia’s eyes. It seemed that her power of vision had only now been ignited; her eyes shone with an ever livelier flame” (79).
    • This sounds to me like it is only Nathanael’s looking at her that brings Olimpia’s eyes to life. She seems to be capable of vision only through the fact that he is looking at her and imputing that to her.
  • Later there are some statements that make it obvious that Nathanael is seeing himself in Olimpia:
    • N to O: “you profound spirit in which my entire being is reflected!” (85).
    • N to Siegmund: “It was only for me that her loving looks grew bright, filling my mind and thoughts with radiance; only in Olimpia’s love do I find my own self again” (89).
    • Then there is the very telling passage on p. 91, that makes it clear that when Nathanael thinks Olimpia is saying just what he would have said about his art, it must only be Nathanael’s own voice.

 

Finally, I find it interesting that when Nathanael touches Olimpia, she is at first ice cold, but then as he looks into her eyes she seems to warm up (83). There may be something here about Nathanael looking into her eyes, seeing himself, and then her skin seeming to pulse with life. He is bringing her to life with his looks and with his touches.

Some thoughts from all this so far:

  • Nathanael doesn’t want Clara to be intelligent, doesn’t want her to see rationally and clearly into what is going on with him. She says that his fears are due to him allowing them to come to life, and he doesn’t want to hear it.
  • Nathanael really loves a woman who has no mind at all, who sees nothing (literally), and who can therefore serve as a perfect mirror to Nathanael himself, reflecting himself back to him as his object of love.

 

Nathanael and the narrator

The narrator speaks of having an experience that you want desperately to communicate to others, but when you try, “[e]very word, … everything that human speech is capable of, seem[s] to you colourless, glacial and dead. You try and try, you stutter and stammer, and your friends’ sober questions blow upon your inward flame like icy blasts of wind until it almost goes out” (61). This struck me as descriptive of what Nathanael was trying to communicate to Lothar and Clara about Coppelius and Coppola, and his response to Clara’s “good sense” as thinking of it as cold and unfeeling. Nathanael struggles to express what he wants to express to Clara, and finally hits on the poem about he and Clara and Coppelius, which she eventually tells him to throw into the fire.

Similarly, the narrator him/herself says that Nathanael’s story had been so gripping that s/he struggled with how to begin. So, the narrator says, “I decided not to begin at all. Gentle reader, accept the three letters (which my friend Lothar kindly made available to me) as the outline of the picture, to which I shall now, while narrating, strive to add more and more color” (63). This is similar to how the narrator describes trying to tell others of a profound experience by first providing an outline and then later shading it in with colour. The letters are the outline that the narrator begins with, but Nathanael’s first letter is also the outline he begins with in telling his friends of his experience, and he tries to fill in the colour later.

So there is some kind of parallel being drawn here between Nathanael and the narrator of the story, I think, though I’m not sure what significance that might have.

 

Eyes!

Really, this whole story centres around eyes. And we have an essay topic students could write about, asking them to discuss the significance of eyes and vision in the story. I hope someone takes this up, because I’m still unsure myself. Here are some random thoughts.

  • When Coppola/Coppelius takes Olimpia away and leaves her eyes, Spalanazani says to Nathanael that the eyes were “stolen from you” (95).
    • This makes sense to me insofar as her eyes only came alive, only had the power to see, when he looks at her and sees her as having the power of vision. Her eyes are his eyes, in that sense.
    • This also brings up the experience Nathanael had when he is spying on Coppelius and his father, and Coppelius catches him and threatens to take his eyes because they need some eyes (for some reason). He was going to steal Nathanael’s eyes, until his father begged Coppelius to let N keep them. What to make of this, though, I don’t yet know.
  • In Nathanael’s poem, Coppelius takes Clara’s eyes and throws them at N’s chest, and they enter his chest “like bloody sparks, singeing and burning” (71). To me, this could suggest a fear of Clara really looking into his heart, that he doesn’t want that?
    • Clara later says that Coppelius fooled him and she still had her eyes, that what entered his breast was drops of his own blood. But when he looks at Clara’s eyes it is death looking back (Olimpia’s eyes?). Perhaps it’s that he fears that if he really were to “belong to her” (71), and she were to really see into his heart, he would die.
    • Notice that when Coppola/Coppelius takes Olimpia away, Spalanzani picks up her eyes from the floor and throws them at Nathanael’s chest, at which point he becomes mad: “Then madness seized Nathanael with red-hot claws and penetrated him, lacerating his mind and thoughts” (95). So the scene in N’s poem gets repeated here.
    • In addition, Coppola’s spectacles scattered over the desk are “shooting their bloodred rays into [Nathanael’s] breast” (77)–another similar image.
    • Finally, when Nathanael looks at Olimpia through the telescope at the party, her “loving look … pierced and inflamed his heart” (83).
  • There is some connection between fire, heat and eyes that I can’t yet make sense of:
    • There is the childhood scene where Coppelius and N’s father are working over the fire, and Coppelius calls for eyes; then Coppelius grabs N and threatens to put “red-hot grains” into his eyes (47).
    • In N’s poem, Clara’s eyes singe and burn his breast when Coppelius throws them at him; similarly, when this scene is repeated and Spalanzani throw’s Olimpia’s eyes at N’s chest, then madness seized him “with red-hot claws” (95).
    • When Olimpia’s eyes seem to come to life when N is looking at them through Coppola’s telescope, the power of vision is connected to fire: “It seemed that her power of vision had only now been ignited; her eyes shone with an ever livelier flame” (79).
    • As noted above, Olimpia’s loving look “pierced and inflamed his heart” (83).

 

Well, that’s about as much rambling as I can do for today, and I really haven’t come to much in the way of conclusion yet. But perhaps these thoughts might be helpful for others in their own interpretations.

Report on my time as a BCcampus Open Textbooks Faculty Fellow

 

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For the past year I have served as a Faculty Fellow with the BCcampus Open Textbook program. The provincial government of British Columbia provided funding for BCcampus to find, adapt, review, and develop open textbooks for the 40 highest enrolled subjects in BC postsecondary educational, and then providing more funding for open textbooks for skills and trades. You can see the amazing success of the program so far in these stats.

Last year BCcampus started a program of having “Faculty Fellows” who would do three things:

  • increase awareness of and promote Open Textbooks on their campuses and beyond
  • engage in research on Open Textbooks and other OER
  • provide feedback to BCcampus on their Open Textbooks program

I, along with Rajiv Jhangiani from Kwantlen Polytechni University and Jessie Key from Vancouver Island University, were the first three BCcampus Open Textbook Faculty Fellows (you can see a post about this from BCcampus here).

Now that we are coming to the end of our terms, we have been asked to write a report on the time spent as Faculty Fellows. I thought I’d make that report public here on my blog. I am organizing it according to the questions we were asked to address (not quite in the same order they were asked, but they’re all here).

 

Coming into the Faculty Fellows (FF) program, what were your expectations about the FF program? How did you envision the year unfolding? Did the FF program meet those expectations and match the vision you had of the year? Why or why not?

I must admit that I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect coming into the program. I felt a little under-prepared, as my two colleagues Rajiv and Jessie had both done much more work with open textbooks than I had, when we started. I had never been involved in adapting an open textbook like they both had, and had never used one either. I felt somewhat worried that I would be called upon to be an advocate for open textbooks without having enough knowledge. Those fears were quickly allayed as I began to learn about the BCcampus Open Textbook program, how it worked, what was involved in adopting and adapting an open textbook, and as I began to read research into open textbooks (kindly provided by Clint Lalonde and Amanda Coolidge from BCcampus). I was also happy to hear that I could review slides from presentations others had already given on open textbooks, to help me prepare for any presentations I might give.

I was also concerned about doing research on open textbooks, in the sense that I not only didn’t know a lot about open textbooks but I am also not well versed in empirical research methods (having been trained in philosophy, where we don’t learn much if anything at all about social science research methods). Fortunately, there was a research project with the OER Research Hub that was already begun but still in early enough stages that those of us not already involved (Jessie and I) could contribute to its design.

 

Is there something you were hoping to do more of with the FF program that you were not able to do? Why?

There are two things that didn’t quite meet my original vision of the year.

1. I had hoped to do more in the way of spreading awareness and advocacy on my campus. I did several presentations on open education and OER at UBC during my year as a Faculty Fellow, and in each one I managed to talk about OT (open textbooks) even where this wasn’t the focus. I also spoke to two student groups about OT. One thing that I wanted to try to do was to contact departments for which there are a number of good open textbooks and make a short presentation at department meetings about the availability of these textbooks. I honestly just ran out of time to do this. I only briefly spoke to my own department, to ask for a volunteer to review an OT on modern philosophy, and to point out that OT in philosophy exist. There wasn’t much (in fact any) interest expressed, but partially the issue there is that there aren’t very many open textbooks in philosophy (and the ones that exist are fairly specialized: logic and modern philosophy; if there were a good one on Introduction to Philosophy, things might be different).

2. I also didn’t do as much research on open textbooks or OER as I would have liked. Partly that was up to me; if I had come up with a research project separate from the one we were all working on, I expect I would have been able to get help in designing and implementing it from people at BCcampus and from Jessie and Rajiv. But my lack of knowledge about open textbooks at the beginning of the program, plus lack of connections to people using them, meant I wasn’t sure quite where to start in thinking about researching them. Now, at the end of the year, I feel much more ready to begin my own research project(s). This is in large part due to the chance to participate in the research project on faculty attitudes towards OER and Open Textbooks that all of us were a part of. I learned a great deal through that process.

 

What resources did you need to do your FF that you did not have?

I think to do the research portion of the role I would have needed more time and more training in just what sort of research would be good to do and how to do it. As there was a research project already in progress, I just helped with that one; but I didn’t have enough knowledge to have been able to run my own research project well, I think (as noted above). However, again, if I had really pushed myself to run my own project I expect I would have found help from BCcampus and my colleagues in the FF program, who would have been able to fill in my knowledge gaps or help with data analysis (as that is something I feel particularly unprepared to engage in).

Please provide a synopsis of your activities in 3 areas: Advocacy, Research, Support.

Advocacy

  • Rajiv Jhangiani and I spoke at the 2015 meeting of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE), on “Enhancing Pedagogy with Open Textbooks and Other OER,” Vancouver, BC, June 2015. In this workshop we spoke about benefits of OT and OER beyond simply cost savings, and asked participants to brainstorm other benefits as well as possible drawbacks and how to address them.
  • I spoke about OER and open textbooks at several faculty professional development events at UBC:
    • I participated in a debate about the value of MOOCs for higher education during Open Access Week at UBC, Oct. 29, 2014. During my presentation I also spoke briefly about open textbooks. Slides from this presentation, and a description of the event, can be found here: https://blogs.ubc.ca/chendricks/2014/11/03/the-open-in-moocs/
    • I co-presented with others from UBC on “Increasing Student Engagement with Open Educational Resources,” once in May 2015 and once in August 2015. The two presentations were actually fairly different, because they were with different groups of people, but both focused on the value of OER and open textbooks beyond simply saving students money. The slides for one of these presentations can be found here: https://blogs.ubc.ca/chendricks/2015/06/13/engaging-students-with-oer/
  • I spoke to two student groups at UBC about open textbooks: the Arts Undergraduate Society and the Science Undergraduate Society (both in Spring 2015). I talked about what open textbooks are and told them about the BCcampus Open Textbook program. I also asked for suggestions on how to get the word out more widely about open textbooks. Slides for both of these presentations can be found here: http://www.slideshare.net/clhendricksbc/open-textbooks-presentation-at-ubc
  • I connected with student leaders at UBC and at Simon Fraser University, which, over the course of the year, has led to some very fruitful activities by students at UBC. When I first contacted a student leader in the Alma Mater Society at UBC, though he was very interested, he couldn’t get the rest of the AMS terribly interested in open textbooks and OER. But after their subsequent election, there were more people interested, and that initial meeting plus subsequent meetings have led to:
    • UBC and SFU students working together on a #textbookbrokeBC campaign on social media (some information about that campaign can be found here: http://www.ams.ubc.ca/leadership/executive/key-projects/open-educational-resources-oers/)
    • UBC students working with our Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology to get discussions of OER and OT into more professional development workshops for faculty.
    • UBC students pushing to get mention of the creation of OER and OT into a document that explains various examples of “educational leadership” that teaching-focused faculty at UBC can engage in to help them achieve tenure and promotion.
    • UBC students working with me to develop a “sprint” to create an OER resource on environmental ethics, that will have case studies that cross disciplinary boundaries. We are in the process right now of putting together a grant proposal to try to fund this project. We envision that the sprint will provide a beginning point for the resource, but that students in various classes at UBC will work across disciplinary boundaries to continue to add to it.

Research

I worked with Jessie, Rajiv, Clint Lalonde and Amanda Coolidge (BCcampus) and Beck Pitt (OER Research Hub) on a survey of faculty in BC and beyond, asking about their attitudes towards, use, adaptation and creation of OER and open textbooks. We had One thing that is particularly valuable about this survey, I think, is that we were able to break down the results according to: amount of teaching experience, full-time vs. part-time employment status, what sort of institution the faculty teach at (research, teaching-focused, community college), and more. We had data from 78 participants from 17 institutions in BC in the survey.

  • Jessie Key, Rajiv Jhangiani, Beck Pitt and I presented some of our findings on this survey at the BCcampus Open Textbook Summit in May, 2015. The slides from this presentation can be found here: http://www.slideshare.net/BCcampus/faculty-attitudes-towards-and-experiences-with-oer-open-textbooks
  • Rajiv Jhangiani and I will also present on this research at the Open Education Conference in Vancouver in November, 2015.
  • Jessie, Rajiv, Beck, Amanda Coolidge (BCcampus) and I are also currently writing a white paper based on the results of this survey.

Support

  • We faculty fellows met monthly with BCcampus to talk about our activities in advocacy and research, and also provided feedback to BCcampus on the open textbook program during those meetings whenever advice was solicited.

Other activities related to my role as a faculty fellow

  • I engaged in an extensive review of an open textbook under development, Ethics in Law Enforcement, by Steve McCartney and Rick Parent. As the book was being written, I provided a great deal of feedback on draft chapters.
  • Jessie Key and I spoke about our experiences with open textbooks at the BCcampus Open Textbook Summit in May, 2015. I spoke about reviewing an open textbook (Ethics in Law Enforcement), and Jessie spoke about adapting an open textbook in chemistry.

 

How much time did you devote to FF? Did we ask too much, not enough of your time? Was the amount of money provided adequate compensation for your work?

It’s difficult for me to quantify the amount of time I spent on the FF program. It came in fits and starts, with some periods being very busy with the research or preparing presentations on the research, or with the advocacy activities, and some periods during which things were much less hectic. I felt very satisfied with the amount of time that was asked of me–not too much, not too little. I appreciated the monthly meetings because they allowed us to keep up with each others’ activities (and some of those activities then provided new ideas for me on what could be done on my campus). Meetings once a month was just right, I thought. I also feel the compensation provided was definitely adequate for the amount of time spent. At no time did I feel I was doing more than I was being compensated for.

 

What kind of orientation do you think is needed for future incoming FF?

Meeting in person at the beginning of the year was very, very important. Since most of the rest of the year we met on Skype, it was crucial to feel like you had already gotten to know others a bit before working together in this more “distanced” fashion. So the first meeting being an face-to-face orientation was very important.

I particularly appreciated learning about the Open Textbook Program generally, how to adopt and adapt textbooks, and about resources for those who want to look into the literature on OT and OER. Knowing that there were slide decks already available for consulting before one creates one’s own for advocacy purposes was also really useful (maybe having those available in a shared cloud folder, for example, would be good).

I suppose the only thing I would add that I didn’t feel I had at the orientation was help in designing a research project if one doesn’t already have one in mind. I’m not sure how this would work, but if at least there was someone who would be the designated person to talk to if one has questions about how to design and carry out a research project, that would help. Or maybe some sample ideas for research projects to get people thinking. Now, honestly, I can’t remember all that happened at our orientation, so there may have been more of this sort of thing than I remember! But it’s the one thing I felt I wasn’t fully prepared for.

 

What advice do you have for future FF?

One thing that comes to mind is to take advantage of all the help and support provided by BCcampus and your fellow faculty fellows as much as you can. It’s such a great opportunity to learn and collaborate closely with a fantastic group of people. Don’t be afraid to ask for help or advice, as in my experience, it was willingly and enthusiastically given.

Also, I think it would be good for each fellow to be clear for themselves about their goals for the year. I had a vague sense of goals rather than setting out clear goals for myself to begin with. Of course, those can change as time goes on, but if you start with a good set of reasonable, achievable goals you might be more likely to keep yourself on task for all of them. I might have done more research on my own if I had done this!

 

Has the FF program been a worthwhile program for you to participate in? Why or why not?

It has definitely been a worthwhile program to participate in. Besides the fact that my knowledge of how to do research on OER and OT (open textbooks) has expanded greatly, I have been able to do many other very valuable things. One is to connect with more people working on OER and OT through my work as a faculty fellow. My connections with Jessie, Rajiv, Beck Pitt at the OER Research Hub, and Clint Lalonde, Amanda Coolidge and Laurie Aesoph at BCcampus been invaluable for learning about OER, OT, and research on these as well as for the possibility of collaborations I would not otherwise have had. In addition, through them and through my role as a faculty fellow and my participation in events such as the Open Textbook Summit, I have meet numerous other people involved with open education, OER and OT. These connections are continuing to prove fruitful for my own learning and for, hopefully, future collaborations.

I have also had the privilege to help with a new movement on my campus, led by students, for OT and OER advocacy. I am particularly excited about that; of all the advocacy work I’ve done through the FF program, I feel like the work with students has had the most rewards. They have had the energy and the drive to push for things I had only thought of but hadn’t followed through on by myself. Their excitement and their perseverance is contagious and inspiring.

Honestly, I have been so inspired by my colleagues in the FF program, by my colleagues at BCcampus, by the students I have worked with, and the others I have met through my FF role, that I can’t imagine the work I have done as an FF this year really ending. I have become one of the main leaders on my campus in regards to open education, OER, and open textbooks, and my leadership work in those areas will most certainly continue. Being a BCcampus Faculty Fellow has been (and will continue to be) an invaluable experience.

 

Drowning Prospero’s Books

Books Destroyed, Flickr photo shared by darkday, licensed CC BY 2.0

Books Destroyed, Flickr photo shared by darkday, licensed CC BY 2.0

 

In our seminar group for Arts One this week we puzzled over several things in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, including why Prospero drowns his books at the end. In the play he says he is going to do so:

But this rough magic
I here abjure; and when I have required
Some heavenly music–which even now I do–
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book. (5.1.50, p. 190)

In Peter Greenaway’s film Prospero’s Books we see the books actually being drowned: he and Ariel throw them in the water. Though as an aside, I think it’s Ariel who throws the books in the water except the last two books: Ariel gives The Works of William Shakespeare to Prospero, along with the “missing play” from it, according to the film, which is The Tempest. Then Prospero throws those books away. I think Ariel does all the others, and Prospero does those. I haven’t yet figured out what to make of that (thus it’s an aside).

In this post I want to suggest a couple of interpreations of Prospero giving up his “art,” drowning his books, at the end of the play. Along the way, I’ll also give my ideas about what interpretations we might give to his magic in the first place.

Prospero as Shakespeare, or a playwright generally, or a filmmaker

As one of our seminar members pointed out, Prospero getting rid of his books makes sense if we take him as a representative of Shakespeare himself, and if we take this play as a kind of farewell to the theatre on Shakespeare’s part.

Title Page of the First Folio, 1623, public domain on Wikimedia Commons

Title Page of the First Folio, 1623, public domain on Wikimedia Commons

And there is good reason why we might think Prospero is Shakespeare: he does act like a playwright, insofar as he puts on a show for others that is a false reality, created through music, actors (the spirits) and what the spirits say (such as in the harpy scene). He also literally puts on a kind of theatre performance in the form of a masque for Ferdinand and Miranda. And his speech right before the bit quoted above about how he’ll give up his “rough magic” certainly sounds like the “magic” could refer to the power of theatre, or of fiction generally:

… I have bedimmed
The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,
And ‘twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war; …
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
… Graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let ’em forth
By my so potent art. … (5.1.41-49, p. 190)

These certainly sound like the sorts of things one can do in fiction, and also in fictional plays of course.

Thus one interpretation of Prospero’s “art” or magic is the power of the playwright to create entire worlds, to make (almost) anything happen as they wish, to create an apparent reality that others might believe to the degree that they allow themselves to be immersed in the play.

Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books takes up this idea as well, interpreting the play in such a way that Prospero is clearly the playwright of the whole story, as well as a character in it. Though of course, as the film is not a theatre production, and doesn’t look like one until the very end (as noted in lecture), we might say that Prospero is a filmmaker, that his magic is the power of filmmaking. (In both of these cases, plays and films, I’m combining the work of the writer and director, the latter being the person who decides what everything is going to look and sound like…so the magic would be that of the person writing and the person directing.)

 

Why he would give up his books under this interpretation

If we take something like this to be a valid interpretation of Prospero’s magic, and Prospero as, therefore, a playwright like Shakespeare, then it makes sense he would give up his magic at the end. Not only insofar as we think of this play as Shakespeare’s “goodbye,” but also in the sense that the play/film comes to an end. The magic of immersing the audience in a story is ending, the magic of creating a fake reality that we might get lost in and forget ourselves and our reality for some time (remember Gonzalo towards the end saying that Ferdinand found a wife “where he himself was lost,” Prospero found his dukedom in the isle, “and all of us ourselves/ When no man was his own” (5.1. 210, p. 199)). Just as Alonso, Gonzalo, Antonio, Sebastian and the others come to see the “real” reality at the end, after having Prospero’s charms wear off, so the audience of the play/film will soon be emerging from the false reality into the more “real.”

I noticed how in the film Alonso, etc., had cloth over their eyes during the whole film until towards the end, after Prospero has Ariel take off his magic cloak and presents himself “As [he] was sometime Milan” (5.1.86, p. 192). When Prospero has taken off his cloak (or right before it…I can’t remember), Ariel takes off those blindfolds and the nobles can now see the “true” reality. This is also when they are able to speak in their own voices, when they and Ferdinand and Miranda move their lips rather than having Prospero speak for them as during the earlier part of the film. These elements of the film really show well, I think, how Prospero is no longer using his magic to put on a show for them, that they are themselves at this point (including Ferdinand and Miranda, who were being “written” by Prospero earlier).

So I think we can interpret Prospero giving up his books as the ending to the false reality that he has created.

 

 

Another way of thinking about Prospero’s art and why he gives it up

As I mentioned in class, we can also add a political element to the power of the playwright/director/filmmaker, given the purpose of court masques at the time. According to an article entitled “Prospero’s Dream: The Tempest and the Court Masque Inverted,” by Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen,

The court masque played a crucial role in the way Renaissance monarchs chose to think about themselves. Masques served essentially as images of the order, peace and harmony brought about by the monarch’s mere presence, and expressed didactic truths about the monarchy. . . .  Under James 1, the form of the masque developed into two contrasting parts. The first section, or antimasque, offered an image of vice and disorder, which, in the second section, the masque proper, was superseded by the workings of royal power, and an ordered, harmonious world, with the king at its centre, was established.

James I of England, c. 1620. Public domain on Wikimedia Commons.

James I of England, c. 1620. Public domain on Wikimedia Commons.

The way I understand this is that court masques showed a visual and auditory spectacle of the monarch’s power, and portrayed that power as able to create “an ordered, harmonious world” out of chaos. As van Dijkhuizen goes on to say, “The court masque, then, manifested an important theatrical image of kingship; royalty’s prime mode of expression was fundamentally histrionic,” where “histrionic” means related to theatre, acting, drama–especially insofar as one is overly dramatic, affected, over-playing a part.

I’m thinking, then, that Prospero’s magic could be related to how royal power at the time may have been propped up in part by something like an idealistic image of that power, something portrayed through court masques but also through other trappings of royalty such as rituals and ceremonies, lavish clothes and properties, even extreme exhibitions of power through grisly executions meant to show how great the “ordering” power of the monarch is against “disorder” (this last bit comes from Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, which we’ll read some of later in the year). And this, ultimately, is all show, a fake reality meant to manipulate what the populace thinks of the monarch.

 

So why would Prospero give this up?

If this makes sense as an interpretation of his magic, why give that up at the end? He is, after all, going back to Milan to rule at least for some time, during which “every third thought shall be [his] grave” (5.1.311, p. 204). Once he has gotten his political power back, wouldn’t this sort of spectacle of power be useful?

There are probably several ways to think about this, but here’s one.

Prospero may be said to realize that there could be problems with focusing too much on providing the “show” of power and not enough on ruling in actuality. He of course found out what happens when you don’t pay attention to the state, when he more or less gave control of Milan to Antonio. But during the play itself he also could be said to realize that putting on a show is not enough. During the masque he has Ariel and the other spirits perform for Ferdinand and Miranda, he suddenly interrupts it and says:

I had forgot that foul conspiracy
Of the beast Caliban and his confederates
Against my life …. (4.1.139-140)

While paying too much attention to the show of power, and trying to convince Ferdinand and Miranda to keep chaste through this masque that counters the disorder of Venus and Cupid trying to entice the two lovers to give into their lust before marriage, Prospero forgets what is actually going on in his “kingdom” on the isle. One can get so lost in the show of power that one fails to pay enough attention to what is necessary to keep it.

We might then connect this to what Professor Crawford said about James I not being a very politically savvy monarch, but someone who loved books and also the theatre. But I don’t know enough about him to take this very far.

As for Prospero, and maybe a Shakespearian comment on royal power, perhaps he gives up his magic because he realizes that the practicalities of ruling are more important than the show of power? Or at least, that focusing too much on the latter can be a dangerous distraction from the former. And further, Prospero then follows this interruption of his masque with his famous speech about how the “vision” he has produced is “baseless,” and so is our lives:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. … (4.1.148-158, pp. 180-181)

Prospero seems to realize that there is a problem with “The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces …” that are part of the trappings of royalty. It is all “baseless,” false, unreal. So perhaps he is ready to give that up?

 

Still, there’s a problem

But that doesn’t mean we can go from this false reality of the show of power to some more substantial reality, according to this speech. Indeed, everything is in some sense “insubstantial,” destined to “dissolve”; our lives are like dreams.

Public domain from Pixabay

Public domain from Pixabay

This idea is exhibited elsewhere in the play and film as well. When Prospero gives up his magic and Alonso, Antonio, Sebastian, Gonzalo and the others come back to their senses, the “reality” they then inhabit is still within the play and the film, of course. They emerge out of one false reality into another false reality within the play and the film. So too, when we as audience members leave the theatre, it is not perhaps to some substantial reality that is significantly different from a play or a film.

The fact that the film starts to look more like a filming of a stage play after Prospero gives up his magic (which I hadn’t noticed until Professor Mota pointed it out) also pointed me in this direction. The film is over, but then we are still in a fictional story. At the end of the film, after the Epilogue, the characters applaud as Ariel runs down the stage, towards the camera, and the last image in the film looks like the page of a book that is being written on. Ariel then jumps out of the frame of that book (perhaps being free from the author, Prospero?), but we are left with the page on which writing is still happening.

Ultimately, this complicates the reading I was giving earlier about Prospero giving up his magic because it is insubstantial, baseless, fake, and he wants something more “real” in terms of being a ruler.

But then again, as one of the members of our seminar said in class, he is nearing death after all; so maybe he is just pondering the end of his own life!

 

 

Collaborative doc on class guidelines

I participated in a #digped Twitter chat today (run by Hybrid Pedagogy), about class policies on use of electronic devices during class. As always, this chat was very helpful for pushing me to be honest with myself, my motivations, and my desires, as well as to consider new alternatives.

I don’t have a policy against the use of electronic devices in class. I feel it would be hypocritical of me to do so because I rely so heavily on them myself during meetings and conferences–I take all notes electronically, and I frequently engage in Tweeting during conferences to promote interesting ideas or facts I’m learning and let others know what’s happening at that session in case they couldn’t make it. But I do get annoyed, and mostly sad, when I spend SO MUCH TIME preparing for courses (those of you who are teachers know how much time that is) and then feel like all that work is going to very little if many students aren’t paying attention.

The #digped Tweet chat helped remind me that there are different ways of paying attention, and even when you think someone is not engaged, they may very well be engaged in a way that you don’t recognize as such. Plus, people need to be human beings, after all, and have breaks where they just zone out for a little bit and then come back. And I need to get over it when I think there is too much non-engagement (because what I think is non-engagement may not actually be such).
This is a lesson I have to keep reminding myself.

 

But on another note; there was a good deal of discussion about having the class guidelines be set collaboratively, with the students. I have 150 students in my Introduction to Philosophy course. I thought such a thing would be impossible. But in a separate discussion on Twitter yesterday, some colleagues suggested breaking students up into groups and having the groups write on a collaborative doc like in Google docs.

I already had a collaborative doc on suggestions for respectful discussions, so I turned that one into a document about other guidelines for the class too.

 

Here is what I have so far. It’s not currently open to editing, but just to commenting; next week it will be open to editing, but please just let the students in class edit, okay? :)

Click here for the doc; there is an embedded version below if you just want to look at it on this blog post.

 

I’d love to hear your comments on:

1. Are these good questions to ask? Are the questions phrased well?

2. What do I do with the answers? I was going to compile them all into a list of suggested guidelines, but not everyone will agree with all of them. Do I just have a vote on the whole list? Having 150 students makes this challenging…

 

Non-disposable assignments in Intro to Philosophy

NoDisposableAssignments

Remixed from two CC0 images on Pixabay: trash can and No symbol

Disposable assignments

In the past couple of years I’ve really been grabbed by the issue of “disposable assignments,” as discussed by David Wiley here:

These are assignments that students complain about doing and faculty complain about grading. They’re assignments that add no value to the world – after a student spends three hours creating it, a teacher spends 30 minutes grading it, and then the student throws it away. Not only do these assignments add no value to the world, they actually suck value out of the world.

A non-disposable assignment, then, is one that adds value to the world beyond simply being something the students have to do to get a grade. A similar idea is expressed by Derek Bruff in a post on the idea of “students as producers”–treating students as producers of knowledge, rather than only as consumers: Bruff talks about students creating work for “authentic audiences,” beyond just the teacher.

Wiley gives an example of a non-disposable assignment: students taking instructional materials in the course (which are openly licensed) and revising/remixing them to create tutorials for future students in the course. Other examples can be found in this growing list of examples of open pedagogy. One that I often hear about is asking students to edit or create Wikipedia articles. Or students could post their work more locally, but still have it be publicly visible, such as what Judy Chan does with her students’ research projects at UBC (click on “team projects” in the various years). Simon Bates has his physics students create learning objects to help their peers (see this story for more).

Students as producers in philosophy courses

I have already started to ask students to do some activities that could add value to the world, whether to their fellow students and/or beyond.

  • In a second-year moral theory course I asked them to sign up for 1-2 days on which to do “reading notes” on the class wiki page: they had to outline one of the main arguments in the text assigned for that day and write down questions for their small group to discuss. You can see those here (organized by group number).
  • In a first-year, introduction to philosophy course I have asked students to:
    • blog about what they think philosophy is, both at the beginning and end of the course–this, I thought, could provide some interesting information to others about what our students think “philosophy” is. I don’t have those blog posts visible anymore because I didn’t ask students if I could keep them posted after the course was finished (d’oh!!).
    • write a blog post describing how they see philosophical activity going on in the world around them, beyond the class–I thought this could be useful to show the range of what can count as philosophical activity. I do still have those posts up (but not for long, because again I forgot to ask for permission to keep the posts up after the course is finished…I will do that this term!): https://blogs.ubc.ca/phil102 (click on “philosophy in the world”)

 

But now that I’m working on my Intro to Philosophy course for Fall 2015 (see planning doc here), I’m trying to think through some other options for assignments with authentic audiences and that add value to the world. Here are some ideas (not that I’m going to implement all of these; I’m just brainstorming).

  • Editing Wikipedia articles on philosophy
    • This is a big task; it requires that students learn how to do so (not just technologically, but in terms of the rules and practices of Wikipedia), plus determining which articles need editing, etc.
    • I would prefer to start with students creating Wikipedia-style articles on philosophers or texts on the UBC Wiki first. Then other students (in future classes) could edit those, and then maybe eventually we could move to doing something on Wikipedia itself (the content would be good, and maybe students would be motivated to move some of it over to Wikipedia at that point).
  • Creating tutorials or other “learning objects” for their fellow students and for the public
    • As noted above, Simon Bates does this in his Physics 101 course, and I can pretty easily see how one might ask students to do so for basic physics concepts. But why not do so for some basic philosophy concepts too?
      • e.g., find something you find difficult in the course, and once you feel you have a handle on it, create something to help other students
    • could be done in groups (probably best, with a large class like Intro to Phil (150 students))
    • could be text based, but better if also incorporates some other kinds of visual or auditory elements (e.g., a video, or incorporating images, or slides or something)
  • Creating study questions or suggestions of “what to focus on” for the readings
    • students often get lost in reading primary philosophical texts, and I haven’t yet managed to write up study questions or suggestions for what to focus on for each reading. This would definitely be useful to other students.
    • But wouldn’t it be cruel to ask students to do this for later students when I haven’t done it for them myself? and do I have time to do this before the Fall term this year? Unfortunately not.
  • Creating lists of “common problems” or advice for writing, after doing peer review of each others’ work and self-reflecting on their own
    • I do provide quite a lot of writing advice to students, but I wonder if advice coming from students’ direct experience in my courses might be helpful to later students?
  • Creating possible exam questions
    • I ask students to do this informally, in groups, as part of the review for the final exam. But why not formalize this somehow so their suggestions are posted publicly? The course page on the UBC Wiki seems like a good place, at least to start. Then students could see them from year to year.
    • A number of instructors at UBC use PeerWise as a tool for students to ask and answer questions. It seems like an interesting thing, but:
      • It’s not public; but it could be used to generate questions and then the best ones could be made public somewhere
      • It’s limited to multiple choice questions, which I hardly ever use (and never on exams)

 

Those are my ideas for now. Have any others? Or comments on any of this? Please comment, below!

Planning a course using Fink’s integrated course design

I was introduced to L. Dee Fink’s integrated course design worksheets when I took a UBC professional development course on Teaching in a Blended Learning Environment. I have really enjoyed using his approach to course design, because it asks you to think about learning goals and learning activities in ways far beyond just thinking about what content students should leave the course knowing. He asks you to consider learning goals in areas such as:

  • Caring goals: developing new feelings, interests, values
  • Human dimension goals: what they should learn about themselves and others
  • Learning how to learn: how will their work in this course help them to learn better in the future?

… among many others.

He also has you start with the learning goals, and then think about content and activities in the course, which seems to me the right way to go about doing things. I used to (and still feel the pull to) start with content and the types of assignments I’d have, and then base the learning goals on those. But of course it makes sense to start off with what you’d like the students to learn, to be able to do, and then have that guide the rest.

I’m working on redesigning my Introduction to Philosophy course, which is a one-term course focused on value theory–anything having to do with ethics, or social and political philosophy, or aesthetics. I have tried several different themes in the past and haven’t really been happy with any of them. This time I’m trying a kind of “life and death” theme, focused on what some philosophers have said about how we should live, and what we should think about death.

I have gone through the process of using these worksheets on this blog before, but this time I am using Workflowy, on the recommendation of Paul Hibbitts. He pointed out to me how easy it is to share parts of your Workflowy lists with others (so they don’t have to see all of what you’re working on, but just the stuff that’s relevant to a particular audience). The free version gets you quite a lot; I’ve been using it for awhile and haven’t run up against the limits to the free version yet. It’s not big on style, and it seems like it wouldn’t be that useful, really, until you get into using it and see the power of zooming in and out of your documents/lists. It’s like being able to go to a particular part of a very long document really easily and ignoring the rest.

Now, I wish I could embed this Workflowy list into my blog post, because then you could see the changes as I update it. But for now, this will have to do.

Here is my working through of Fink’s worksheets for my Introduction to Philosophy course: https://workflowy.com/s/mnpuEmtnAu

And here is a copy of what I’ve done so far, just copied and pasted from that Workflowy list today. I’d welcome any feedback you have!

 

Starting to work through the course design worksheets on Workflowy

Dee Fink’s integrated course design In what follows I am using Dee Fink’s course design worksheets: http://www.deefinkandassociates.com/GuidetoCourseDesignAug05.pdf

  • Situational factors to take into account when designing the course
    • students--what do they tend to be like? prior experience with philosophy? attitudes towards the subject?
      • most tend to have little or no prior experience with philosophy; few know what philosophy is
      • most tend to find the readings very challenging
      • some think that works in the history of philosophy are not relevant to their everyday lives; they prefer the more recent works
      • mostly first and second-year students, so many of them are new to UBC (esp. since this is first-term course)
      • most taking lots of courses, and/or working alongside their studies; they generally have too much to do and not enough time, so often stressed
    • number of students, physical meeting space, structure of the weekly meetings, etc.
      • max 150 (currently 136 enrolled)
      • large lecture hall, with tables and immovable chairs: https://ssc.adm.ubc.ca/classroomservices/function/viewlocation?userEvent=ShowLocation&buildingID=LSK&roomID=200
        • will be somewhat difficult to do small groups b/c can’t move chairs around; tried small groups in a room like this in the past and it was difficult
      • 2 50-minute classes per week with all students; each student also part of one 50-minute discussion section with 25 students and a TA (I run one of these)
    • the course–particular departmental or institutional requirements?
      • not required for majors, so there is no particular curriculum that must be followed, no philosophers that have to be discussed, etc.
      • focused on value theory: ethics, social and political philosophy, aesthetics, the meaning of life, the good life… anything in one or more of those areas
      • should just introduce students to such topics and get them interested in philosophy if possible, maybe draw in to take more courses (or just get a decent sense of what philosophy is like and then they may never take another philosophy course again)
    • special pedagogical challenges of the course
      • making philosophy interesting and relevant to newcomers without sacrificing rigor
        • exemplifying what philosophers do in a way that makes it seem like something useful for all of us, while still showing how difficult and complex it can be
      • for me, showing the value of reading and discussing people like Plato, Epicurus, Mill to those who find them just old and no longer relevant
        • why are works in the history of philosophy still important to read and talk about? Why not just read stuff from the last 50-100 years?

 

  • Learning goals #LOs
    Fink suggests thinking about learning goals in several categories, noted below

    • Foundational knowledge: what key information or ideas, perspectives are important for students to learn?
      • This is a tough one because of the nature of the course: there is no specific curriculum or set of information that must be taught in the course. But there are still some things I think they should know by the time they finish the course.
      • What is an “argument”? They should be able to outline an argument in a philosophical text, identifying premises and conclusion, and be able to evaluate it effectively.
      • They should come out of the course with an understanding of:
        • What an “examined life” is, acc. to Socrates, the Socratic method
        • Some of the basic arguments of Epicureanism and stoicism, existentialism, utilitarianism, Nussbaum’s “capabilities” approach
      • [The following is for an earlier version of the course, for when I thought I might focus it on the philosophy of happiness] Name and explain three approaches to the philosophical study of happiness (e.g., hedonism, desire satisfaction, eudaimonism…what else?) and correctly connect one philosopher to each
      • [The following is for an earlier version of the course, for when I thought I might focus it on the philosophy of happiness] Explain how philosophers study happiness as distinguished from empirical, psychological research, and say why the philosophical approach is also valuable.
    • Application: what kinds of thinking are needed, such as critical, creative, practical? What sorts of skills do they need to learn?
      • critical thinking (analyzing and evaluating): analyzing and evaluating arguments in the texts, and arguments by themselves and peers
      • creative thinking (imagining and creating): come up with own criticisms of arguments and better ways to approach the issues; come up with creative solutions to ethical problems discussed
      • practical thinking (solving problems and making decisions): take what they understand about sound argumentation and apply it to their own arguments, whether oral or in writing; also do so with the arguments of their peers in class or in peer feedback on writing
      • skills
        • being able to outline and evaluate arguments by others in the readings, as noted above
        • write their own arguments, in various formats such as informal blog posts and formal essays
        • evaluate arguments and writing by their peers, as a means to help improve their own writing
    • Integration: what connections should students make between parts of the course? between what’s in the course and other areas, such as their own lives?
      • It would be great if they could see why philosophical thinking about many issues is valuable
        • What is philosophical thinking/activity and why is it useful more generally?
        • How do they already do philosophy in their university studies or other parts of their lives?
        • How might philosophical thinking be good for them to continue in the future?
      • I don’t think it’s required, but it would be nice if the things we’re studying affected their own views of what a “good life” is, and had an impact on how they live their own lives
      • They should be able to understand how the various approaches to “living well” and approaching death well differ, the strengths and weaknesses of each vis-à-vis the others
    • Human dimension: what should students learn about themselves? about interacting with others in the future?
      • It would be good if they learned the degree to which they tend to rely on unexamined beliefs and values in their thoughts about happiness (and other things, potentially), and why it might be good to examine those
      • Learn that philosophical activity is something that they can and already do in their lives outside of class
      • Learn the value of respectful, philosophical (or other) dialogue with peers–how can we engage in dialogue that respects everyone and yet moves forward rather than sitting with everyone’s differing opinions and not going anywhere out of fear of offending anyone?
    • Caring: what changes would you like to see in what students care about? In their interests, values, feelings?
      • I would like them to care about careful, philosophical inquiry, argument and dialogue, about how such activity can be helpful in addressing disagreements, if done well
      • Care about whether their own views and values have been examined, whether they can provide adequate arguments for them, and what to do if they think they can’t
      • Care about whether their own arguments for “big questions” like happiness or the good life are sound
      • Care about treating with respect those whose views differ from theirs, but not thinking that this must mean we have to be relativists, that there are no objective truths about value
    • Learning how to learn: what would you like students to learn about how to learn well in this course (and beyond)? how to become self-directed learners, engage in inquiry and knowledge construction?
      • learn the value of working together with peers to learn; that sometimes learning on one’s own works well, and sometimes it’s also valuable to learn with peers
        • learning with and from peers is not a waste of time compared to getting info from the prof as expert
        • recognize that even when they feel they know more than others, “teaching” others is a very useful way to better understand something; we learn by helping others to learn, not just by getting information from them
      • learn how to take notes on the main points of complex, philosophical texts
      • learn what to do if something isn’t making sense; what options do they have for getting help? How can they avoid just being confused and not doing much to solve the problem?
      • recognize the importance of writing and rewriting, that a first draft of a piece of writing is usually not the best, and revising to create new drafts is important
      • understand that philosophical texts may require more than one read to understand them well

 

  • Draft learning objectives developed from the above #LOs
    These don’t address all of the goals above; some of those goals are addressed in what we’ll be doing in the class, but don’t show up specifically as objectives

    • For reference, LO’s from PHIL 102, Summer 2015 syllabus (this version of the course was on a different topic)
      • 1. Give an answer to the question (one of many possible answers!): how would you describe what (Western) philosophy is, what philosophers do, and how such activities might help to make people’s lives better, based on your experiences in this course? (“philosophy in the world” assignment)
      • 2. Explain at least one way in which they engage in philosophical activity in their lives outside this class (“philosophy in the world” assignment).
      • 3. Explain the basic structure of an argument–premises and conclusion—and outline an argument in a philosophical text (argument outlines, final exam)
      • 4. Assess the strength of arguments in assigned texts, in oral or written work by other students, and in their own writing (argument outlines, essays, peer review of other students’ essays, group discussions)
      • 5. Participate in a respectful discussion with others on a philosophical question: clarify positions and arguments from themselves or others, criticize flawed arguments, present their own arguments, and do all this in manner that respects the other people in the discussion (small group discussions)
      • 6. Write an argumentative essay that outlines and evaluates the views of other philosophers (essay assignments).
      • 7. Explain how at least two Western philosophers might answer the question: what is philosophy/what do philosophers do, and how might it help make people’s lives better? (essay assignments)

 

  • Draft Learning Obj’s for this course: Students who successfully complete this course should be able to:
    • 1. Define and explain at least two philosophical approaches to how we should live (such as Epicureanism and Stoicism) and give the name of at least one philosopher who espouses each. Explain the similarities and differences between those approache sand evaluate each.
    • 2. Explain the utilitarian approach as well as the capabilities approach to how we should help others to live well, and give the name of at least one philosopher associated with each. Explain similarities and differences between these approaches and evaluate each.
    • 3. Explain the basic structure of a philosophical argument–premises and conclusion—and outline an argument in a philosophical text
    • 4. Assess the strength of arguments in assigned texts, in oral or written work by other students, and their own arguments (oral or written)
    • 5. Participate in a respectful discussion with others on a philosophical question: clarify positions and arguments from themselves or others, criticize flawed arguments, present their own arguments, and do all this in manner that respects the other people in the discussion
    • 6. Produce a polished piece of philosophical writing, with a sound argument, strong evidence, and clear organization
    • 7. Read a complex philosophical text and take notes that distinguish the main points of the arguments therein.
    • 8. Based on what we’ve studied in the class, give one (of many!) possible answers to the question: What is philosophical activity and why might it be useful? How do you engage in philosophical activity outside this course?
  • Assessments to fit these objectives (TBA)
  • teaching and learning activities to fit these objectives (TBA)
  • consider whether the parts of the course are integrated (TBA)

 

 

Yes, a philosophy degree has many uses

The headline of a recent article from Forbes:

That ‘Useless’ Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech’s Hottest Ticket

http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2015/07/29/liberal-arts-degree-tech/

This article gives several case studies of leaders in the tech industry whose liberal arts degrees have served them well, and how tech doesn’t need just people with tech degrees. One of them is the founder and CEO of slack.com, who was a philosophy major.

 

I heard about the article via a tweet:

 

What’s a surprise to me is that this is still a surprise. Well, okay; maybe it’s not a “surprise” to me that this is so, but rather a “disappointment.” Those of us who teach and learn in the liberal arts get it already and try to make the case as much as we can. And some of our students complain about having to try to make the case to their parents. Clearly the message isn’t yet fully being received.

Or more likely, it takes the non-liberal-arts people saying it for the message to be believed.

I taught myself some CSS! (and am very excited about it)

I am working on a teaching and learning portfolio right now because I’m going up for promotion to Professor of Teaching (the highest rung in the “teaching” faculty track here at UBC). I decided to create it on my own domain I got with Reclaim Hosting, so I could have more control over the theme/plugins (and the freedom to break it, of course, that goes along with that).

Through this experience I’m beginning to understand why UBC Blogs only has a few themes available; I have tried numerous free themes on my own WordPress install, and have found several problems with many of them. Only after working hard to customize them the way I want, of course. Then I find out something is weird/buggy/doesn’t work the way I need, and I don’t have enough expertise to fix it.

I finally found a theme I think I can deal with, Moesia, which I first heard about through Alan Levine, and which was recommended when I took the You Show course (well, I participated a little bit at least), so I figured I was probably safe with it not having too much wrong.

Here’s the shell of the site so far (content to be inputted this week!): http://chendricks.org/portfolio

(On this domain I also have my DS106 blog: http://chendricks.org/ds106, but don’t try going to http://chendricks.org because you’ll just see a message about it being under construction. Later I’m going to make that my general hub of info/links about me, but it’s not ready yet).

Teaching myself CSS

So I liked a lot of things about Moesia, but there was still a problem. The menu items in the Section Widget (see here for plugin–made here at UBC!) were showing up with a different colour for links than the rest of the links on the site. What’s worse, they were a kind of medium-grey colour, and you couldn’t really tell they were links until you moused over them. I wanted to change those links to the same colour as the rest of the links on the site.

Enter web search for “change colour of links CSS.” That works fine if you want to change all the links on the site, which actually I wanted to do because I didn’t like the colour of the links on the main pages of the site. From this site I learned you can do this:

——————————–

/* unvisited link */
a:link {
color: #FF0000;
}

/* visited link */
a:visited {
color: #00FF00;
}

/* mouse over link */
a:hover {
color: #FF00FF;
}

/* selected link */
a:active {
color: #0000FF;
}

———————–

Of course, you just add in your own colour codes for what you want.

That would have worked fine except it changed not only the links in the body of the pages but also in the title and menu bar, which I didn’t want. The title and menu were white on black, and when I changed the rest of the links these looked bad on the black background.

Enter “inspect element”: go to a place on a page, right click, and select “inspect element” (at least that’s what it says on Firefox). I learned this trick from the WordPress drop in sessions at UBC. Then you can mouse over various parts of the code on the bottom and see what they refer to on the page. Below I have the problematic section widget highlighted.

 

Screen Shot 2015-07-13 at 9.38.50 AM

 

From this page I learned how to change the colour of links in a particular section of a site. And from here I learned the difference in the CSS for div vs. class.

I tried at first to change the colour in the “page-list” class, but that didn’t work. I can’t remember exactly what CSS I used, but it didn’t work anyway.

Here is what I finally came up with that worked, after many, many trials and errors. I figured this out by looking in the right pane on the screenshot above and finding where the colour was for the links.

—————————————-

/*changing colour of links in sidebar pagelist widget*/
.widget-area .widget a {
color: #B42C03;
text-decoration: none;
}

.widget-area .widget a:hover {
color: #2b7291;
text-decoration: underline;
}

.widget-area .widget a:active {
color: #000;
text-decoration: bold;
}

————————————-

Then I got bold and decided I wanted to change the colour of the other links in the site, but not the ones in the header bar–the title and menu. Using the same process as above, determining what the section was called for the body content of the pages (I tried “body,” but that didn’t work), I came up with this:

————————————-

/*changing colour of links*/
/* unvisited links */
.entry-content a:link {
color: #B42C03;
}

/* visited links   */
.entry-content a:visited {
color: #B42C03;
}

/* user hovers     */
.entry-content a:hover {
color: #2b7291;
text-decoration: underline;
}

/* active links    */
.entry-content a:active {
color: #000;
text-decoration: bold;
}

———————————–

I left the “visited” and “unvisited” both there even though they’re the same colour, in case I want to change that colour later (the code is there and I don’t have to try to remember it later!).

Then I realized the comment forms still had the old link colour, so I changed those too:

———————————–

/*changing colour of links in comment form*/
.comment-form a:link {
color: #B42C03;
text-decoration: none;
}

.comment-form a:hover {
color: #2b7291;
text-decoration: underline;
}

————————————

 

The last thing I wanted to change was the colour of the links in the sub-menus in the menu bar. Here is what it looked like before:

 

Screen Shot 2015-07-13 at 1.39.05 PM

It’s not too bad blown up like this, but on a big screen those links were hard to see against the white background. I wanted them the same colour as the other links on the site.

When I did “inspect element” on that section it said <ul class=”sub menu” style=display: block;”>.  So I tried the following, and it worked!

———————————-

/* unvisited links */
.sub-menu a:link {
color: #B42C03;
text-decoration: none;
}

/* visited links   */
.sub-menu a:visited {
color: #B42C03;
}

/* user hovers     */
.sub-menu a:hover {
color: #2b7291;
text-decoration: underline;
}

/* active links    */
.sub-menu a:active {
color: #000;
text-decoration: bold;
}

————————————-

Again, I left the “visited” and “unvisited” links both there and both the same colour, in case I want to change the colour of one of them later.

 

Next steps

I really don’t know what I’m doing with CSS. This was the result of a lot of trial and error over the past couple of days. And I still don’t really know when to use something like .sub-menu versus #sub-menu (one is for a div and one for a class I think, but I don’t know which is which so I just test them out; and I don’t know what a div or a class is, actually).

I’m a total geek about this stuff. I really love being able to do this, to have control beyond what the theme allows under “customize”–if they haven’t provided me with the option to change the link colour with the free theme, I want to be able to do it anyway. I vividly remember my first coding experience in junior high school (grades 8-9), in BASIC (yes, I am that old). I loved it. It was like a puzzle and you got to see right away if you figured out the answer b/c things either worked or they didn’t. Then I learned some FORTRAN at university, but then didn’t do anything after that. And I kind of miss it.

If I had time I’d do a course on html and CSS, like this one from Code Academy.

But right now I’m busy working on my promotion portfolio. Maybe I’ll keep learning CSS as I go, as things come up that I want to do.

Like for instance I want to change the font size on this site (I’m getting old and can’t deal with small font)! Gotta figure out how to do that….