Author Archives: chendric

Informal, anonymous survey on open education

I’m doing a workshop on open education at UBC in June, and another at the American Association of Philosophy Teacher’s conference in July.

Here’s a teaching kit for the UBC workshop I made with Mozilla Thimble by remixing another teaching kit.

I know a fair bit about why I think being more open in teaching and learning is a good thing, but I’d like to hear from others what they think (positive and negative) to help me plan the workshops. I’d also like to use the anonymous responses to this survey in the workshops themselves, in case there are things there that we don’t come up with ourselves in discussion!

No matter your views on open education, I’d like to hear them! Here’s the survey (on Google Forms, but you don’t need a Google Account to fill it out). All that I can see of the responses is the day/time and what was said, nothing more (no IP addresses even). So from my end, it’s quite anonymous, though I can’t say exactly what Google collects when you fill out these types of forms (at least probably info on your browser, where you got to the survey from, and the like, but a thorough review of the terms of service and privacy policy from Google didn’t answer this question for me with any specifics).

If you’d be happy to participate but would rather just send the info to me personally (and I promise not to reveal any identifying information if you do!), you can send me an email: clhendricksbc@gmail.com

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UBC’s Policy 81 and Open Education

In my previous post I discussed UBC’s Policy 81 on the use of teaching materials for for-credit courses. The following will make more sense if you’ve read that post!

Here I would like to talk a bit about my own views of the policy and my fears about how it may set back efforts to promote open education at UBC.

Some general thoughts on Policy 81

I may be an anomaly in this regard, but when I first read the policy I wasn’t really concerned about it. That’s probably because I already share my teaching materials using a Creative Commons CC-BY license (see here for an explanation of CC licenses). The idea of sharing my teaching materials widely amongst the UBC community wasn’t a problem for me because I had already made the decision to share them with anyone who wants to revise and reuse them, asking only for attribution.

But as I read various arguments against the policy (many of which are collated on the Faculty Association’s website, on a page devoted to Policy 81, and I’ve discussed them in some detail in my previous post), I definitely came to see the problems with the way the university has approached this issue, particularly by requiring an “opt out” procedure rather than an “opt in” one.

I can see some of the rationale behind the policy, and why it’s an “opt out” process, for things like the following examples:

1. An instructor is involved in creating teaching materials for a course for which the curriculum remains the same, or teaching materials are revised and reused several times over the years: the people who come in to teach the course later may not be able to legally use the previously-created materials without express permission were this policy not in place. Which is fine, if the original author can be contacted and give that permission, though they may not want to have to go through the hassle of doing this over and over (the author could, alternatively, give a kind of blanket permission to use the materials in any future iteration of the course, though not everyone may be comfortable with that, so a one-by-one permission-granting process may be required). Now, an opt-in type of teaching materials repository is an option, but the author of the materials may not keep the particular materials (specific assignments, etc.) up to date in such a repository. S/he may put one version in, change it for another year, forget to put that one in, and then the later instructors need to track him/her down for express permission each time they want to use the updated materials. This can be fixed with later updating of the materials in the repository, of course, but it’s an extra hassle.

2. An example I used in my previous post: instructors in a team-taught course collaboratively come up with essay topics, and if one of those instructors is part of a later team of instructors for that course and the later group wants to use one or more of those essay topics again they should, officially, ask permission. But it may be that the original author(s) are unavailable, having retired and not being easily accessible. Or, to make things more complicated (and something I didn’t address in the previous post), if the essay topics were jointly created, does one need to get permission from all of the instructors in the previous group? Probably so, but that’s a bit of an administrative headache. Now, I don’t know if the policy would cover this situation exactly, because I’m not sure what “sharing” constitutes in the policy (one has to share one’s teaching materials before they fall under the policy). But perhaps sharing with one’s team members means one is “sharing,” and thus anyone else at UBC could use the materials without asking for express permission under the policy.

3. A faculty member shares an assignment or a syllabus or some other teaching document with me, and I ask permission to revise and reuse it: is oral permission enough? Shouldn’t I get it in writing just in case any challenge comes up later by that person or someone else? Sure, this is probably a VERY unlikely scenario, but in terms of intellectual property rights and following the rules, it’s probably best to get it in writing. And if I want to reuse the materials over and over, should I get written permission over and over for each course I teach for each time I teach it, or a blanket written statement saying I can use the materials in any future course I might teach? Policy 81 would simplify all that.

Now, none of this is to say that I think Policy 81 was a good idea; it’s rather that I’m trying to think through some reasonable reasons why something like this might make sense, though ultimately I think an opt-out policy does NOT make sense, partly due to intellectual property and copyright concerns (as discussed under “copyright law” in my previous post), but also because, as I noted in the previous post, what happens when people opt out of this policy is that the idea of sharing teaching materials openly takes a step backwards.

Policy 81 and open education, open sharing of teaching materials

Open Call for Women in Photography, Flickr photo shared by Jon Feinstein, licensed CC-BY

As noted in my previous post, a number of people have already signed up on the site where faculty members can register the courses for which they don’t want their teaching materials shared. There’s no way to tell how many others have started putting notices on their materials that they may not be revised and reused without express permission. Now, doing these things takes us back to the status quo, where the owners of the copyright on those materials must be asked permission before revising/reusing the materials. That’s not what I’m most concerned about because it’s not a change from before the Policy was passed.

What does concern me is that I fear those people may now be less willing to share their teaching materials outside of UBC, with something like Creative Commons licenses. Who knows…maybe they wouldn’t have done so anyway, but I worry that the negative hype around all of this, the fears about UBC wanting the teaching materials to make money on online courses (as noted in my previous post), the fears about that happening times ten in the wilds of the world, will lead people to just say no thank you to the idea of sharing with a CC license. And that saddens me.

A good thing about Policy 81, as pointed out by Will Engle in a conversation recently, is that it states explicitly that the university encourages open sharing of teaching materials beyond the university. In the preamble, the policy says:

UBC encourages the free and open distribution of teaching materials beyond the UBC community. To create and preserve knowledge in a way that opens and facilitates the dissemination of knowledge to the world, UBC Instructors are encouraged to utilize Creative Commons licenses, digital repositories and other open access channels to distribute their teaching materials broadly.

Of course, this isn’t required, just encouraged. But it’s a nice thing to see this encouragement enshrined in a policy–albeit, now, one which the faculty union has opted all of its members out of, as stated in my previous post.

But by making Policy 81 an opt-out policy, and with the (justifiable) reaction from the faculty union and others encouraging faculty members to opt out, to put notices on their teaching materials saying they may not be revised and reused without express permission, with the fears that others are out to make money off their materials, I wonder if some people who might have been willing to consider open licensing of their materials might now refuse to do so. This is just a wonder at this point, though I plan to do a survey soon to find out more on this (see below).

I also worry that some people may be less likely to put their teaching materials on public websites, in case that might be considered “sharing” under the policy, and thus effectively make those materials open to revision and reuse by other faculty members at UBC. Now, since the faculty union has opted all of its members out of the policy for now (and who knows what will happen in the coming months, as the grievance they filed goes through the process of being dealt with), maybe fewer people will have this concern. But I’d hate to see more of our teaching materials get siloed behind closed LMS walls for some who might have considered public websites instead.

Why do I care about possibly having less openly shared teaching materials?

Good question. The first thing that comes to mind is that I have learned so much by reading materials posted by others on public websites, all around the world. When I’m teaching a new class, I search for syllabi that might help me think about good readings. I use others’ lecture notes to help me understand complicated texts and how others approach teaching them to undergraduates. I never actually copy or distribute their materials unless they are licensed in such a way as to allow it, but just being able to see them is valuable. The more our stuff is locked away behind closed LMS’s, the less this is possible. I don’t know if anyone will ever find my teaching materials useful, but that’s just the point–I can’t know ahead of time how they might be useful to others. And I want to give back, having gotten so much value from reading what others are doing.

There’s also the argument about public funding of what we do and how this might be a reason to make our work more accessible to the public. There are already numerous governmental grant requirements to make research open access if it’s publicly funded, and one could make a case that the same should go for teaching materials. Now, the thing with teaching is that it is sometimes only partially publicly funded. I’m not sure how much of the UBC budget comes from public funds, but I do know that it’s not 100%. There are numerous other sources of funds, certainly including tuition, which would suggest that closing off teaching materials only to those students who have paid could also make sense. I suppose one could figure out the percentages and make only a certain part of one’s teaching materials publicly viewable, but this seems pedantic to me. I have chosen to go more or less 100% to open access of teaching materials (and beyond them being just viewable…more on that below), though I can see someone choosing to go 100% to just allowing students who have registered to see them. There are numerous justifiable reasons why one might not want all (or any) of one’s teaching materials publicly viewable, and I respect that. But my own choice rests partly on the idea that the public is partly paying for what I do, so it makes sense to me to let them see what I’m doing.

But I have gone beyond just posting on public websites; I also use CC licenses on my materials. So far I’ve used CC-BY on all of them–anyone is free to revise, reuse, redistribute them for any purpose, so long as I am attributed. This means that I even allow commercial use of the materials, that someone could reuse them to make a profit. Why I chose to do this has some complicated reasons behind it; I’ve tried to collate my thoughts on this blog post and the discussion in comments underneath it. Again, I do see good and justifiable reasons why one might not want to allow commercial use of their teaching materials, and I very much respect the decision of others to use CC-BY-NC or CC-BY-SA (share-alike) on theirs (again, see here for a description of the licenses).

What I would not like to see is people using a CC license that does not allow derivatives (CC-BY-ND), because there isn’t really much value in allowing others to reuse your teaching materials if they can’t be revised in any way. How often is it the case that what works in one course, at one time, in one place, is going to work exactly as is in another course, in another time and place? Yet the way our faculty union has spoken about CC licenses here, they have made it sound like “no derivatives” is the way to go:

Are there other ways to mark my work to indicate whether or how others may use my work?

Creative commons provides guidance on this, and has prepared symbols to express your preference, as follows:

If you want to retain control: attribution-non commercial-no derivative (CC by-nc-nd)

If you are willing to relinquish control: attribution-share alike-non commercial (CC by-nc-sa)

The wording here suggest that with ND you somehow retain control, which sounds like a good thing to do, right? The only thing ND does that the other licenses don’t do, though, is to make sure no one can alter your teaching materials in any way (including by translating them into a different language), thereby effectively making most of them unable to be reused effectively. You don’t control exactly who uses them or how (though if you add the “non commercial” to the “no derivatives,” as suggested above, then you can make a stink if someone uses your materials for a commercial purpose). Reading the faculty union’s page on this issue, one would not even know there are other options besides these two licenses. The only links to licenses they give is to explanations of CC-BY-ND.

A survey I’m planning

Mostly my fears at this point are just fears–I don’t know what people are doing or thinking beyond the few I’ve talked to. I don’t know if people are less willing to use CC licenses, or to post their teaching materials publicly, than they were before or not. I’m also very much interested in the reasons why people might choose to do these things or not. And now that all Policy 81 has brought a lot of these issues to the forefront, I think this could be a good time to survey faculty members about their views. I’ve also put in a conference proposal to talk about this policy and what faculty attitudes towards it and towards open sharing of teaching materials are generally, and so if it gets accepted I’ll report the results there. Which means I’ll need to get ethics board approval for the survey first!

I’m thinking of asking faculty members something like the following questions:

1. Are you familiar with Policy 81? If so, describe briefly what it requires. [I want to see if there is any misunderstanding about the policy out there,]

2. Do you think Policy 81 is a good idea, or do you find it problematic? Explain why in either case. [I want to find out what the main reasons are people have for opposing it. I don’t expect many people will be in agreement with it, but who knows.]

3. Would you be willing to put some or all of your teaching materials on a public website? Why or why not?

4. Are you familiar with Creative Commons or other “open” licenses? If so, explain briefly what one or more of these allows. If not, … [I hope to have a “fork” of the survey going to a page that explains the various CC licenses]…

5. Would you be willing to allow the revision and reuse of your teaching materials by others, outside of UBC, by posting them publicly and using one of the Creative Commons licenses or another open license? Explain why or why not.

These are just my first, preliminary thoughts on what I might ask. Any suggestions welcome, as well as any comments on my concerns above!

How Not to Encourage Open Sharing of Teaching Materials (UBC’s Policy 81)

How To Share, Flickr photo shared by janelleorsi, licensed CC-BY

In February of 2014, the Board of Governors of the University of British Columbia passed Policy 81: Use of Teaching Materials in UBC Credit Courses. Note, April 2015: since it looks like the policy will change (see this blog post), I’m attaching the original version of the policy here because the link might go to the new policy eventually. If the link goes to the policy as passed in 2015, then please see here for the 2014 version: Policy 81, as passed in 2014 (PDF)

I am writing a couple of posts about this because it has had some problematic ramifications for open sharing of teaching materials at UBC, and seems to be a step backwards in terms of promoting open education. In this first post I’ll discuss the policy, what has happened since it was passed, and the problems with the policy. In the next post I’ll talk about my main concerns with it vis-à-vis open education, and a survey I hope to do about faculty attitudes towards open sharing of teaching materials.

The policy

Ostensibly, Policy 81 was designed in order to clarify how teaching materials shared between faculty members can be used, given intellectual property concerns (e.g., if one is teaching a course for which someone else designed some of the materials in the past, can one use and modify those materials to use in one’s own course? Does one have to get express permission to do so?). Section 1.2 of the policy states the following (if this link goes to the policy passed in 2015, please see the PDF given above, just below the image).

In order to facilitate collaboration with colleagues and enable Departments to support outstanding teaching, if a UBC Instructor makes his/her Teaching Materials available for use by others, unless that UBC Instructor places restrictions up on the Teaching Materials that he/she shares in accordance with Section 2, UBC may, through its Faculties, Departments and individual Instructors, use, revise, and allow other UBC Instructors to use and revise the Teaching Materials to facilitate ongoing offerings of Credit Courses. The contribution of all UBC Instructors to the development of such Teaching Materials will be acknowledged in accordance with accepted scholarly standards unless the UBC Instructors advice UBC, at any time, that they do not wish such acknowledgement.

One might think of this as something like a CC-BY license, but only within one institution–if you share your teaching materials, you are understood to be doing so in a way that allows anyone else in the University to use and revise them so long as they give proper attribution.

On the face of it, this seems fairly reasonable. If I share my syllabus, or an essay assignment, or lecture notes with another faculty member, they don’t have to track me down to get written permission to revise and reuse. Sharing means it’s understood that you can do that within the UBC community (but not beyond). Just as an extreme example, I teach in a team-taught program, and some years we will basically re-use (maybe with some revision) essay questions that others have written in years past. No one questions that that is permissible; no one says, hey, shouldn’t we ask so-and-so if we can re-use their essay question (and what if so-and-so retired several years ago and we can’t get a hold of him or her?). Though technically, it may be that permission should be sought and granted before re-using and revision teaching materials in this way, just like we have to get permission to re-use images on websites if they aren’t openly licensed (here at UBC, we faculty own copyright in our teaching materials). I have used a “late essay form” that was shared with me from another faculty member, with attribution, for many years now; but I never asked that faculty member if I could. I probably should have. This policy says we don’t have to ask permission, which streamlines such activities.

So far, so good, one might think. The policy reiterates that UBC faculty own copyright in their Teaching Materials and that nothing in the policy changes that:

1.5 Sharing materials does not imply any transfer in the ownership of copyright by UBC Instructors. Nothing in this policy transfers the ownership of any Teaching Materials to UBC.

The response so far

There was an email from our faculty union telling us the dangers of this policy, and how to put notices on our teaching materials that they may not be revised and reused by anyone without permission. That’s one way to opt out. Another way is to exempt all materials from particular classes from the policy by registering each class at this website: https://policy81.learning.ubc.ca/ (UBC faculty and staff can log in and see all the courses on the registry, so they can know whether they will need to ask permission for the materials they would like to revise/reuse).

Anecdotally, I’ve heard from a number of people who are very upset by this policy and who making sure to exempt their teaching materials from being reused. As of today, there are approximately 81 faculty members who have registered their courses on https://policy81.learning.ubc.ca/, though I had to count by hand and some people registered different courses at different times and showed up at different places on the list therefore, so some may have been counted twice. That’s a fairly small number of the over 5000 faculty members between the two campuses of UBC (Vancouver and Okanagan). But there’s no way to tell how many people are putting notices on their individual teaching materials saying they may not be reused without permission.

On March 17, 2014 the UBC Faculty Association (our faculty union) filed a grievance with UBC’s Vice Provost and Vice President Academic. The letter is currently posted online here: http://www.facultyassociation.ubc.ca/docs/news/policy81_FAgrievance.pdf Among other things, the grievance states that the policy restrains faculty from fully exercising their rights under copyright law and that it infringes on academic freedom. On April 15, 2014, UBC denied the grievance, and from what I can tell, the issue is now going to arbitration.

On April 23, 2014, the UBC Faculty Association sent an email to its members (currently available on the front page of their website, but it will likely be replaced sometime soon) saying that they had issued a blanket “opt out” of the policy for all its members.

We heard loudly from large numbers of you that you did not agree with having to individually opt out of that policy to protect your teaching materials – and that you also objected to the administrative burden this policy has created. In response to the clear message we have received from our members, including a request for a blanket opt-out direction, we have issued such a blanket opt out on your behalf with this letter. Consequently, your teaching materials are now protected from being appropriated by the University for its own purposes, unless you indicate clearly that your materials are to be shared.

The Faculty Association’s blanket opt out letter can be read here. It’s currently also posted online here: http://www.facultyassociation.ubc.ca/docs/news/policy81_blanketoptout.pdf

The policy has also been brought to the attention of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, which I think is an association of various faculty unions at institutions of higher education in Canada. CAUT sent a letter to the UBC President in February 2014, criticizing the policy and saying they may have to censure the UBC administration if the policy is not suspended. The university president’s response argued that CAUT’s criticisms were unjustified, and CAUT responded in May by saying that censure will be imposed on UBC in November if parts of the policy are not withdrawn by then.

What went wrong

A lot, really. The following are the problems noted by the Faculty Association in various letters and emails about Policy 81. In the next post I’ll add my own concerns, specific to worries about what this policy may have done to efforts to promote open education.

Procedural problem

This is an important concern, but not one I’ll spend a lot of time on because I don’t understand it fully. The faculty union argues that the proper negotiating process was not followed in passing the policy; I THINK the problem is that the policy concerns intellectual property, and the union is arguing that, based on a precedent set in a previous arbitration case, such matters must be handled through the collective bargaining process (I’m getting this from this letter by the Faculty Association, but I could be quite wrong!).

Opt-out

As a friend of mine said on Twitter, no policy that requires opt-out is likely to be popular. This was one of the major complaints against the proposed policy before it was passed, I think. Many faculty members are happy to share teaching materials–indeed, a number of us (including me) make an effort to put CC licenses on most or all of them. But to mandate that once you share your teaching materials in some way (and what it means to “share” is vague…see below) you are sharing with the entire UBC community unless you opt out angered many people.

Vagueness

The policy states that once one “shares” teaching materials, those materials can be revised and reused by anyone in the UBC community. But what does it mean to “share”? Given the policy’s ostensible purpose, I think one thing it means is that if I give a syllabus or a set of essay topics to someone, they can give it to someone else at UBC who can then revise and reuse the materials. That is what has happened with the example of essay topics being revised and reused in a team taught course for example, as I discussed earlier. A set of essay topics was shared within a teaching team, and a member of that teaching team kept the essay topics and later shared it with another teaching team, who revised one or more of them and reused them. So the policy would mean that this sort of practice is acceptable, whereas officially it probably wouldn’t have been if we didn’t get express permission.

But does it also mean that if I make teaching materials available on a public website, where students and others can view them, that is deemed to be “sharing” such that now anyone from the UBC community can revise and reuse them? The policy is not clear on that question, but if it does mean that I fear that it could cause some people to stop posting teaching materials on public sites and go back into the closed LMS environment. But then again, the policy isn’t clear on whether posting teaching materials to the closed LMS system here at the university constitutes “sharing.” I would argue that it shouldn’t, because it’s kind of like handing out paper materials in the classroom, only allowing for the saving of paper if students don’t mind reading things online. And I don’t imagine that giving out syllabi and assignments in the classroom constitutes the type of sharing that the policy is referring to.

Copyright law

The policy states that faculty members retain copyright on their teaching materials. Thus, unless we have expressly put a license on them stating they may be used in certain ways without getting explicit permission, then anyone who wants to revise and reuse them has to get that explicit permission. That’s how copyright works in Canada.

I was trying to think of whether there’s an analogous situation to help think through this particular issue, some situation in which one gives someone else a license to use one’s copyrightable materials without them having to ask permission each time. And of course I came up with social media sites like Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter; I also thought of MOOC companies like Coursera. For such sites, the terms of use include the provision that by using the site one is granting the company a license to use the things you post (in part, so that they can post them at all, but sometimes also for other purposes, like allowing others to re-post what you post). Twitter’s terms of service say, for example:

You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

Coursera’s terms of service are similar:

With respect to User Content you submit or otherwise make available in connection with your use of the Site, and subject to the Privacy Policy,you grant Coursera and the Participating Institutions a fully transferable, worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free and non-exclusive license to use, distribute, sublicense, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such User Content.

Could we think of Policy 81 analogously in any way? By sharing your teaching materials (okay, we need to figure out just what “sharing” means), you grant anyone at UBC a license to modify, use, redistribute them, just like by using Coursera one agrees to allow Coursera (and the participating institutions) to modify, use, redistribute what one posts? I suppose so, but here’s the downside: people can just choose to not use Coursera, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, etc. if they don’t like these terms, and the analogous situation is that people can just opt out of sharing teaching materials at all. Which is not a good outcome (and is what is starting to happen).

Use of teaching materials for flexible learning initiative

UBC has an initiative at the moment to encourage faculty to engage in “flexible learning,” which seems to mean using things like “blended” courses (both face-to-face and online), “flipped classrooms,” and other ways to be more flexible about teaching, learning, and credentialing (e.g., badges). In an email to members, the President of the Faculty Association warned that one of the reasons behind Policy 81 may be for UBC to be able to use teaching materials to generate additional revenue by implementing them in online courses that the university charges money for.

Academic freedom

The grievance filed by the Faculty Association states, as its first point, that Policy 81 violates faculty members’ academic freedom. I am not actually sure what the argument here is; I’d love to hear in the comments if anyone knows!

In the next post, I discuss what impact this policy could have on efforts to increase open education at UBC.

philosophy with children at Pacific APA

I’m currently attending the Pacific Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, in San Diego, California. Today I attended two sessions on doing philosophy with children–one on “Raising a Philosophical Child” and one on a book by Jana Mohr Lone called The Philosophical Child.

I decided to tweet about a few of the issues and questions raised in these presentations, and Mariana Funes suggested I keep tweeting about things I was interested in and use these tweets as a springboard for a blog post. Good idea, I thought.

Philosophy w/kids at conference: we are surprised at what kids can do—this shows an impoverished sense of their capacities.

— Christina Hendricks (@clhendricksbc) April 16, 2014

This idea really hit me right off the bat. It’s from a quote by Charles Payne in I‘ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. He was talking about being surprised at the capacities of ordinary people when they do extraordinary things, and this may say more about our view of people than anything else. The speaker, Marisol Brito from the University of Minnesota, said that we are often surprised at what children can do, what they think and say, but perhaps this is just because we have an impoverished sense of children’s capacities.

Yes. How often am I surprised at what my child can do, what he is capable of asking about, of discussing at the age of 6 (or 5, or 4, etc.), but should I be? After all, if we continually have the experience of being surprised by what kids can do, and we have it with many kids over time, perhaps it is time to rethink our expectations of children. With parents, I suppose it makes sense, though–we have seen our children start off as beings who can hardly see straight (literally) to ones who can say a few words, to ones who can reason out complex arguments. At each stage we see they can do more and more, and in comparison to what they could do before it seems surprising. But there is also a more general sense of what children are capable of doing and thinking, and anecdotally I think it is often impoverished amongst those who don’t work with children often (I expect teachers and caregivers are less often surprised by what children can do!).

That the idea of doing philosophy with children seems strange and even impossible to some, who are then surprised to find out that they are very philosophically-minded (myself included, when I first started thinking about this issue) says quite a bit, I think, about what we think children capable of.

An ageism in philosophy: a phlphcl idea or question raised by child not taken as seriously as if raised by adult. From conference pres.

— Christina Hendricks (@clhendricksbc) April 16, 2014

I wish I remembered which speaker today said this; it was only this morning and already I forget which it was (in my defense, there were five speakers in the first panel and four in the second, so lots of people to remember). I think it was Jana Mohr Lone. Regardless, this one really struck home for me too. I think I’ve been guilty of this sort of ageism myself. I can imagine my son, or another child raising a philosophical issue and I think it’s either “surprising” or something to put on Facebook or some such, but not something to have as sustained a conversation about as with one of my university students or another adult. And I’m a philosophy professor; I should know better.

But then, maybe that’s the problem; maybe it’s because I’ve been trained to think that philosophy is just the sort of activity we engage in with those who have studied the history of philosophy to some extent (and sometimes only the history of Western philosophy) and who can speak in terms of the conceptual frames and terms that are used in professional philosophy. Or at least, who could learn those frames and terms (undergraduate students, for example) and start speaking with them even if they don’t yet. So when a 6-year-old raises the same issue, it doesn’t seem like we’re doing philosophy in some way because the conversation has a different tone, uses different words, can’t get to the same level of deep subtlety.

But of course, an adult raising the same issue who has not been trained in philosophy can’t get to the same level of subtlety that we can get to with our colleagues or even our university students–imagine, for example, someone at a dinner party with no formal training in philosophy, with whom you end up talking about a philosophical issue. I can still imagine myself taking that conversation more seriously than I might with a 6-year-old on the same topic. Why? What does it mean to take a conversation seriously? Does it mean that one thinks the conversation can be beneficial for both parties, maybe? If so, that can certainly happen with children, who bring perspectives to such conversations unfettered by more solidified beliefs, and who can lead one to view the issues differently than before, perhaps (an experience reported by several people on the panels today). If taking a conversation seriously means it is worth one’s time to really engage, because one can learn from the other or vice versa, I think this can certainly happen with children.

Realizing at philosophy w/kids conference panel that I spend way too much time providing answers & not enuf asking child to think abt answrs

— Christina Hendricks (@clhendricksbc) April 16, 2014

Why do I treat philosophical questions in my kid as things to be answered by me, but in my Uni students I ask them to try to answer? — Christina Hendricks (@clhendricksbc) April 16, 2014

These two thoughts go together. Doing philosophy with children involves getting them to talk about and give reasons for their views, and engage with the views of other children–agreeing, disagreeing, saying why, etc. There is less in the way of giving answers than asking them to come up with their answers, to say why they think so, and to be open to changing once they’ve talked with others. But when I compare this to what I do on a day-to-day basis with my son, I realized that most of my time with him is spent in answering questions rather than encouraging him to come up with answers.

Now, this makes sense in many contexts; for some things there just are answers to be given, and he really has no idea what those answers are or how to try to find them (he’s six, remember). But in other situations, the answers are less clear, the questions more philosophical, and I am missing opportunities to engage in conversation with him, to move together towards what we think the best answer should be. I just jump to telling him what I think, even when I know (and sometimes say) that there are different views on the subject that could be legitimate. Or, sometimes I just say “I don’t know” because there isn’t a clear answer and I am too tired to try to explain why. And yes, the lack of philosophical engagement with my child is sometimes just a matter of being too busy and too stressed to take the time.

But here’s an opportunity I could easily take that I don’t, usually: many children’s books raise philosophical topics, and I could ask him questions after reading the books that would get him thinking about things like ethical questions, questions about friendship, personal identity, and more. There was a demonstration of a philosophy with children session at one of the panels today, where some kids from a local school (I think around 8-9 years old) had a conversation about such topics with a teacher, after having heard a story being read to them that started the conversation. They were very, very eager to engage with these questions, a phenomenon reported by several presenters today. I’m a philosopher and I’ve never really tried this with my own child. Why? Mostly because I think I don’t know how. It’s like I can teach Plato and Hobbes and Foucault to undergraduates, but I don’t know how to ask similar questions of a 6-year-old. Is it really that different, though, once you get over the fact that the text being discussed is different? By the way, there are numerous books and resources about just how to have philosophical conversations with children, including with children’s literature. A list of several such books can be found at the website of the University of Washington Center for Philosophy for Children.

What explains the excitement many children have for philosophy q’s & distaste many adults have for them?

— Christina Hendricks (@clhendricksbc) April 16, 2014

This question was asked by Norvin Richards of the University of Alabama, commenting on Jana Mohr Lone’s book noted above. Many have experienced how excited children are to engage in philosophical questions, and yet we also see a similar reticence (or “distaste,” in Richards’ words) in many adults. What happens in between? What changes? We can blame “the schools” for taking curiosity out of children, the standard answer (and maybe there’s some truth to that), but is there something about these two different stages of life, or the nature of the developing human brain and mind, that could account for the difference? This was an open-ended question, as we none of us have a clear answer. Here was one of his guesses (I think he used the word “guess”):

Maybe b/c children are less committed to their conceptual frameworks than adults so more willing to question? If so, why this true for kids?

— Christina Hendricks (@clhendricksbc) April 16, 2014

This makes sense to me, but then again, I don’t know much about this subject at all! Jana Mohr Lone replied by saying she thinks this may be the case, and because children have less experience with the world so perhaps what seems like it must be true may be more malleable (with less experience, less cementing of particular views of how things must work?). In response to these tweets, Jill Fellows suggested:

@clhendricksbc maybe kids see possibility. But at a point, maybe we want less possibility and more certainty? Something to do with mortality

— Jill Fellows (@FellowsJill) April 17, 2014

Yes, maybe so. But someone at one of these panels also said it can make sense to give kids what seem like “right” answers to philosophical questions because it provides them with more safety–doing philosophy with kids opens them up to uncertainty and the potentially frightening space of not being sure what to think. Now, this wasn’t given as a reason not to do philosophy with children, just a reason why some might not want to, or want their children to engage in philosophical discussions (this might be particularly true of those who want to instill certain philosophical or religious views in their children and don’t want these to be questioned). Still, I wonder if children are more or less open to uncertainty than adults; I honestly don’t know.

This sounds like a question for the psychologists!

I’m glad I decided to send out some tweets today; there is no conference hashtag (philosophers and twitter…hmmmm…), but I thought I’d tweet out a few things anyway. It provided a great way to take notes on what I found most interesting, and thus a good basis for a blog post. Thanks for the idea, Mariana!

Springtime photoblitz

For the online digital storytelling course called DS106, week 3 (last week) was all about telling stories in photos. I managed to do one of the assignments for that week, just yesterday: a photoblitzing safari. For this assignment, one has 15 minutes to take pictures, trying to fit as many of the following categories as one can:

Take a photo dominated by a single color.
Take a photo of an interesting shadow.
Take a photo of something futuristic.
Take a photo at an unusual angle, e.g. looking looking up at something or looking down at something, or from the view of an ant.
Take a photo into bright light.
Take a photo of someone else’s shoe or foot.
Make an inanimate object look alive.
Make a photo that uses converging lines to draw us into the photo
Take a photo of two things that do not belong together.
Take a photo that shows a repeating pattern.
Take a photo where you move the camera as you take the photo, so it gives the subject a suggestion of motion.
Take a photo that is looking through a frame or opening to something else.
Take a photo that represents joy.
Make a photo that is abstract, that would make someone ask, “Is that a photograph?”
Take a photo that represents a metaphor for complexity.

I did a similar kind of photoblitz about six months ago, for the Headless version of ds106 that ran in the Fall of 2013. Here’s my post on that one on Tumblr. Most of my ds106 stuff is on that Tumblelog, but this time I wanted to do it on a Word Press site so I could take advantage of something else I learned from this week’s ds106 assignments: creating a gallery of images in Word Press. These instructions from Word Press work a bit differently than what I had to do here on this blog, because this one has an extra step when uploading media, during which one has to avow that what one is uploading doesn’t violate copyright. But I figured out how to do a gallery nevertheless.

So here it is …

: End time

: Repeating pattern and converging lines

: Colour and complexity

: Repeating pattern?

: Abstract (and also complexity)

: One colour

: From below

: Double frame

: They sort of belong together, sort of not.

: Converging lines

: Start time

Now, it looked fine until I realized I didn’t have the right version of one of the photos, and when I changed it out the whole gallery went into reverse order (the “end time” photo is at the beginning and the “start time” at the end). Now, no matter what I do, no matter whether I say “ascending” or “descending” order, it won’t change the order. There seem to be little boxes where I could put numbers in to force the order, but I don’t seem to be able to type into those boxes. So now I’m stuck with this order unless I delete the whole gallery and start over (which is not an option at this point, given that actually creating the gallery was not terribly straightforward and I might have to re-upload all the images).

So while this might work very well on WordPress.com blogs, on UBC Blogs it’s not working very well. Alas. I also can’t seem to control the fact that all one can see are thumbnails until clicking on the images; this is the only option I have for a gallery on this blog; there are more options for WordPress.com blogs.

Thoughts on these images

I went to about the same place where I did my photoblitz last Fall, not because I thought it was the best place, but because it is on the way to and from my home to work (yes, I work on Sundays too!), and it has the most variety of things. I tried a different place on my walk home, but as I was looking around there just wasn’t that much in the way of variety of things, patterns, colours, etc.

The light was not great (again, just like last Fall). It was cloudy rather than sunny, so I couldn’t get bright light or shadows–whaddya want, it’s Vancouver. I kept all the photos just as they came out on my phone, except the one of the tree with pink and white blossoms. It was just so utterly dull without a little apping up; all I did was play around a bit with iPhoto on my computer, adjusting things like exposure, contrast and saturation.

The “From below” image was taken under one of the frames in the “Double frame” image. I was going for something like the rule of thirds, with the top line at the top third and the leaf on the left third, but the top line is a little too high. Still, I think that (with the caveat of the crappy light), that’s kind of a nice image. We have lots of awnings made of glass here in Vancouver that get all dirty from the rain and debris from trees, and they look kind of yucky. But this image made it look less yucky and more kind of interesting, possibly abstract.

The picture of the daffodil was supposed to be one dominated by a single colour, not just b/c the flower takes up so much of the frame, but also because it is such a bright and vibrant colour. I didn’t have to mess around with any settings on that one; it’s just how it came out on my phone. Not the best closeup image by far, but not bad for an iPhone. There’s even a little bokeh in the background!

My “abstract” photo was of a waterfall. It didn’t come out quite as abstract as I wanted; you can still tell pretty easily that it’s a photograph, and one that is blurry where the water is moving. It looked cool when I took the photo, but not as great when it came out on the computer. Part of the problem is that whenever I zoom in with my phone, the image comes out blurry and pixellated a bit. I needed to have a real camera with me to do this image well. It also represents complexity, as fluid dynamics is extremely complex!

The first repeating pattern image is not really all that repeating–I just thought the bark looked interesting, with the lichen on it. I think this is a cedar tree of some kind.

My second colour and complexity image, the one I adjusted a bit in iPhoto, looks closer to what these flowers look like in good light (not in cloudy light). It’s also an image of complexity, given how branches buds grow (fractals and such).

With the last repeating pattern image, I liked how the lines curved in the foreground and then started converging in the background. There isn’t as much convergence as I wanted in the background, though.

Of all these images, I think I like the “From below” one best. It is just the most interesting image, to me, visually. It’s not that easy to tell what it is, why there’s a leaf in it. And it’s close to the rule of thirds, just not quite!

Concluding thoughts

I really like doing these photoblitzes–they are challenging but fun, and they definitely get you to pay close attention to your surroundings in a way you wouldn’t do before. I found myself looking at lampposts and rubbish bins to see if any angle on them might lead to an image of something “futuristic,” for example (didn’t come up with anything), or whether any inanimate object around me could be photographed in a way that made it look alive (again, nothing). I played around with moving my phone while taking a picture to simulate motion (didn’t work), and I was looking for converging lines, repeating patters, and complexity all over!

I’ve decided that it’s definitely time for me to take #phonar and finally get my photography skills in better shape. Looks like the next one isn’t until Sept/Oct 2014, though, when I’ll be super busy with teaching again. Sigh.

The shape of things falling apart

I’m participating in the open online digital storytelling course called DS106, which is happening on a shortened, 7 week schedule until about mid-May. For the first week, we were asked (among other things that I didn’t have time to do because I’m still teaching right now) to think about the shapes of stories. Two things we could look at were a video in which Kurt Vonnegut explains some familiar story shapes, and a web page in which Kenn Adams talk about the idea of a “story spine.” We were asked to think about a story familiar to us in terms of these ideas.

In a course I’m teaching called Arts One (a team-taught, interdisciplinary course for first-year students at the University of British Columbia), we’re reading and discussing Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart this upcoming week. So I figured I’d try to analyze this text using these two discussions of the shapes of stories.

Vonnegut’s story shapes

In this video by Vonnegut, several story arcs are described:

1. “Man in a hole”: someone starts of being above average in terms of good/bad fortune, then goes significantly downwards, then gets out of the hole by the end, back to approximately where s/he started.

2. “Boy meets girl”: someone starts off in a pretty average position of good/bad fortune, then finds something great or something amazing happens to him/her, then they lose it, then they get it back again (or something else that brings them back up).

3. Cinderella: someone starts off very low on the good/bad fortune scale, climbs upward, then falls down, then goes back up. In Cinderella’s case, she ends up with ultimate, off the scale happiness.

Of course, a pattern is easily recognized here: one somehow at some point goes downward in the good/bad fortune scale, and then goes back up. Maybe they go up before they go down, but regardless there is some downward movement and back upward movement.

Can we read Achebe’s Things Fall Apart as fitting one of these shapes? I don’t think so, because it has more of a tragic story shape. To me, that means that someone starts off pretty high up on the good/bad fortune scale, or starts off middling and moves up, and then goes downward…and the story ends. That’s pretty much what happens here. Of course, perhaps that’s one of Vonnegut’s story shapes too, it’s just that we don’t see the whole talk from which this video is taken. He’s only talking about the “comedies” (happy endings) rather than the “tragedies.” This seems pretty clear a tragedy.

At the beginning of the story, Okonkwo is said already to be famous as a wrestler. He has excelled in life far beyond his father, Unoka, who was “lazy and improvident and quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow” (4). He is also mired in debt, and his wives and children “barely had enough to eat” (5). Onkonkwo is ashamed of his father and has done much better for himself by the beginning of the novel. He is not only renowned as a wrestler, he has also “shown incredible prowess in two inter-tribal wars,” has “two barns full of yams,” has just married his third wife, and has taken two titles (8). He starts off in a very good position in his society.

Things start going downhill for him after he takes part in killing a boy who has lived with him for several years. Ikemefuna was sent to live in Okonkwo’s village as part of a settlement between clans, when another clan murdered a girl of Okonkwo’s clan. Ikemefuna lived in Okonkwo’s household for several years, when an oracle decrees that he must be killed. An elder tells Okonkwo not to participate in the killing (57), but he ends up doing so when Ikemefuna runs to him after someone else strikes him first, and Okonkwo, fearing “being thought weak,” strikes him as well and kills him (61).

Things start going downhill after this. During a funeral ceremony for one of the men of the village, Okonkwo’s gun accidentally goes off and kills the 16 year old son of the dead man (124). He has to leave the clan for seven years. He goes back to the village of his mother and works there during that time, and is upset because he is not rising higher in his clan like he had hoped. During this time missionaries come to his old village and the one he is living in as well, and he gets the devastating news that one of his sons has joined the new religion.

When at the end of his seven years of exile Okonkwo returns to his village, he finds that the clan is broken apart, with some people going over to the new religion and a new rule of law and court system run by the missionaries. Okonkwo’s full downfall comes when he kills one of the new converts who is enforcing the laws of the missionaries, hoping that the rest of his clan will join him in rebellion against them. But the clan does not act; instead, they ask why Okonkwo killed the man (204-205). The next we hear about Okonkwo his body is dangling from a tree, after he has chosen to hang himself.

This story starts from a place of relative prosperity, and the protagonist simply goes downhill. We might even think about him having a character flaw, a “hamartia” in the ancient Greek language of tragedy, that leads him to this downfall. In Okonkwo’s case it could be his temper, his ruling of his household with a heavy hand (13). He beats one of his wives during the “Week of Peace” (29), which is against the rules of their religion, and even shoots at one of his wives at one point (39). It could also be his overbearing fear of weakness and effeminateness, which is what leads him to kill Ikemefuna. But then again, this could just be me approaching the story from my 21st century, North American values.

Kenn Adams and the story spine

According to this post, the story spine is a way to come up with ideas for a well-crafted story. It is just the backbone, just the basics, on which other elements of the story can be hung. It goes something like this:

1. The beginning: establishes the main character’s world and everyday routine. “Once upon a time…” and “Every day…”

2. The event: but one day, the routine is broken.

3. The middle: the consequences of breaking the routine. “Because of that…” and “because of that…” and “because of that…”

4. The climax: “until finally…” the character “embarks on success or failure.”

5. The end: success or failure occurs, and “a new routine is established”

This fits quite well with Achebe’s novel. The first few chapters establish Okonkwo’s world, the daily routines, the rituals, the seasonal festivals, and more. Then one day he kills Ikemefuna. Or maybe the event in this story should be thought of as accidentally killing the son of a man during that man’s funeral, since that really breaks up his routine: because of that, Okonkwo has to go into exile. Because of that he does not prosper in his clan as he had planned.

Then there was also the arrival of the missionaries, which doesn’t have any direct causal connection to what Okonkwo has done (no “because of that” here), but which ends up “breaking the routine” in an entirely different and much more destructive way. Because of the missionaries’ arrival, Okonkwo’s son ends up estranged from his father. And the missionaries end up jailing Okonkwo and others at one point until the village pays a fine. And then on top of that there was the killing of the religious spirit by a convert, and all of this seems to lead to the climax: Okonkwo killing one of the converts and hoping the rest of the clan will join him in a war. But he has misread them; they are as weak as his son, and he cannot face his life anymore. The end: failure.

This is, at least, how I’m reading the text before hearing one of our teaching team lecture on it tomorrow…maybe I’ll change my mind about the story and its shape later.

Concluding thoughts

This was a really interesting exercise–I discovered that there are certain shapes of stories that are common, that you can find within many stories, such as the up-down movement of fortune or the story spine. I can see how practice in finding these sorts of shapes in stories might help one better construct stories oneself. Interesting that there are some very regular shapes that work, that are repeated over and over.

When I started doing ds106 about a year ago (this is my third iteration already!) I was convinced I had no artistic talent. That myth got busted very quickly. I’m still pretty convinced I don’t know how to create a fictional story that works. Most of my ds106 artworks aren’t really full narrative stories, but images, animated gifs, short videos that don’t really fit any of these kinds of shapes. But maybe it’s time to start busting the idea that I’m just no good at telling stories like this and that it’s some kind of mysterious power that some people have and others don’t. Maybe there’s some kind of basic rules or shapes that one can start with and then fill out. Hmmm… for now, I think I’ll just stick to finding those shapes in others’ stories and slowly work towards maybe one tell telling my own.

Work cited

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. Anchor Canada, 2009.

Books, print, recordings & conversations (#rhizo14)

Tonight’s reading, taken Feb. 17, 2014, by Christina Hendricks

For week four of the P2PU course on “Rhizomatic Learning,” we were prompted to think about whether books are making us stupid. How might it even be possible to consider that they could be?

Dave Cormier on print

Dave Cormier explains in his short video introducing the week (available on the previous link). There, he asks us to consider that there is something about print that encourages “objectivity,” “distance,” “remove,” “impartiality” (I didn’t get all his words written down exactly, so I’m just quoting the parts I did write down exactly!). He argues that print tends to move us more towards the definite, the defined, rather than the relational. And he asks us to consider moving more towards orality in learning. This is not to say that books are a problem, but rather that we think about how we learn with books and print in general, and consider both its upsides and downsides.

Here’s a post by Dave that really helped me get my head around what he’s getting at: “Is books making us stupid? Behind the curtain of #rhizo14.” There, he suggests that in moving from orality to print, “We moved from ideas moving towards fluidity to them becoming more truth based,” and he suggests that conversations bring out more complexity while print can lead us to think about things in more simple terms. Here’s the quote from that post that gave me that proverbial light bulb turning on in my head:

The book promotes independence of thought, our ‘own’ ideas and our ‘own’ inferences. It promotes possession. It reifies the things we are reading and makes them a thing that can belong to a person. There is value in this. But there is also a fundamental difference between an idea that I HAVE that I DEFEND against someone else and an ongoing conversation that develops BETWEEN people.

I read this is saying that part of the issue with print is that it encourages us to think of ideas as belonging to their authors. We start to talk in terms of “Foucault’s view,” and “Nietzsche’s view” (I’m currently teaching a course on Nietzsche and Foucault, so they’re on my brain), and try to figure out what their ideas were. Those ideas and arguments become stuck in time, in the same form, for as long as the print exists and people remember it. The ideas are held by a certain person and the arguments are their defense of these ideas, as if the ideas need to stay static. As authors of print works ourselves, we start to think about our “own” ideas and arguments as embodied in the print. Of course, intellectual property and citation requirements in written works add to this sense.

Another part of what I think Dave may be getting at is that in printed works, the “feel” is that ideas are presented with arguments supporting them as if they are to be taken as true, as if there is little conversation to be had because the answer has been given. When we read arguments for positions it can feel like the author is saying: here is what is the case, I’ve backed it up with reasons and evidence, so we really don’t have much to talk about. I don’t know if that’s what Dave means, but I can see how that might be a concern too.

How different is the notion of having a conversation in which ideas develop through the conversation itself, and are not really owned by anyone in the conversation because they emerged out of it. And of course, it’s probably the case that most (or all?) of our ideas work this way anyway, it’s just that the conversations are spaced out further in time (more on this below). How different too the experience of engaging in a conversation with someone about ideas and arguments, rather than just reading those of a distant author in a book. The ideas and arguments become more fluid, change with the conversation.

I really liked this opportunity to think this way about print, as it’s something I hadn’t really considered before. Of course, it’s not just print that does this, since video and audio recordings can be part of the same phenomenon. They, too, freeze ideas and arguments in time, can make us think of these as belonging to a particular person who is espousing them. Indeed, Frances Bell says in a recent blog post that she recorded a video for week four of Rhizomatic Learning, thinking it might be less “book-like,” but that the video itself reifies her words and thoughts just as much as text does, and the comments on the video are a conversation but reified in text (they would be in video too). Her point in this thought-provoking post is that both the reified and the participatory are useful, and can intertwine in complex ways (the video and comments were reified, but also constituted a participatory conversation). You can’t have one without the other, as the title of this blog post states (she notes that this comes from the idea of a “duality of participation and reification” from Etienne Wenger’s Communities of Practice).

My reflections

My first thought on considering this topic was: well, the books I read (philosophy, literature, some educational theory, mostly) do not stay the same over time. Every time I read them, and especially when doing so with students, they change. What they say is not so much a matter of what’s on the page, but how it’s interpreted and understood, and this changes between people and over time in the same person. Further, as others have pointed out, including Jenny Mackness on her blog post on this topic, reading printed works doesn’t preclude having lots of conversations with others about those works.

Later, I also thought: I consider at least some books, especially those that are more open to interpretation, as conversations over long periods of time. Whereas a conversation that takes place simultaneously, or in a short period of time, can only include a few people, a printed work can reach many more over longer periods. Socrates and Nietzsche and Foucault are all still talking to us, and we can converse with them to some degree insofar as we read and react to their works. They cannot respond, though, and so it’s a one-way conversation.

Finally, I thought: do I consider printed works as solidifying or at least stabilizing ideas and arguments in the sense that they are presented, with supporting arguments, as “true” and thus do not invite further conversation? The rhetoric with which some works are written, including philosophical ones, can often seem this way. But I think of offering reasons for claims as actually inviting conversation rather than closing it off. By giving reasons for a view, one is suggesting that the view is potentially debatable; for if it were not, if it were clearly true, no one would take the time to offer an argument for it. So in a way, I think of writing arguments for views as inviting others, from many places and over long periods of time, to engage in a kind of conversation by considering whether those views and arguments are valid, inviting criticism as well as potential agreement. We might even say that printed or recorded works can potentially engage more people in conversation with them than simultaneous conversations can do at any one time, since those who miss out on that conversation can’t participate in it later unless it’s written down or recorded in some way. But once again, the “conversation” one can have with a written or recorded work may be one way only (not a conversation with the author), especially if the author cannot respond (though we can still have a multi-way conversation between various readers!).

Thus I think I’m agreeing with Frances Bell that the relationships between more stable works and the conversations with and around them are complex. First, many of our ideas that we write down or record most likely come from conversations (whether through textual or other media), such as in-person conversations, comments on blogs, responses to journal articles, online meetings, and more. But also, once they’re written down or recorded they can be part of several conversations, perhaps even after we’re gone.

Does any of this address the issue of thinking of ideas as “belonging” to their authors in some deep way? Probably not. Inviting discussion of one’s views and arguments puts them up for contention and change, but by connecting them with a specific author we are likely to still them of them as the view of a particular person. I wonder how much that happens in oral conversations too, though? We do, after all, have ways to “cite” oral communication as well as written. And there are so many social and educational structures built on the need to be able to tie ideas to people that it’s hard to avoid thinking in this way. Which is not to say it’s impossible.

Enforcing(?) autonomy (#rhizo14)

I will walk and walk and walk Flickr photo shared by Fimb, licensed CC-BY.

Week 2 of the Rhizomatic Learning course on Peer 2 Peer University is about “enforcing independence.” In the introductory video for this week (found on the previous link), Dave Cormier asks us to consider how we might help students to be able to be responsible for their own learning, including being able to self-assess the quality of their own knowledge and work, and to self-remediate when necessary. This could include recognizing what you do and don’t know, where there are gaps in your knowledge or skills, how to go about filling those, and then actually doing the filling. With these things happening mostly or wholly on the students’ own initiative. Well, I think mostly so when we’re talking about a formal course situation, since in such situations there will always be an element of external forces (the teacher, the mark/grade, e.g.) playing into one’s learning activities.

Independence and Autonomy

Dave noted that there is a “primary paradox” in the idea of enforcing independence, which is pretty clear on the surface: how can you force someone to act independently? It seems impossible from the start. Jenny Mackness wrote a blog post this week that addresses this paradox, and suggests that “autonomy” may be a better word than “independence”: partly because many of us don’t necessarily just want students to learn how to learn “on their own” but rather to learn interdependently as well, and partly because some learners will always be dependent on others in some ways (e.g., some with special needs). But also, she notes, the idea of learners being free to decide what they need/want to learn, taking the initiative to do so, and being responsible for the consequences that ensue suggests something closer to autonomy than independence.

I guess that, being a philosopher, one thing I might do here is go into an in-depth discussion of the similarities and differences between the concepts of autonomy and independence. But I’m more interested in other things, so for now let me just say that to me, autonomy signals more of a sense of having one’s choices and actions come from one’s own will, one’s own choices, whether one is also working with others or also dependent on them for support or not. So in that sense, I agree that autonomy may be a better term.

Enforcing (?) autonomy

So, is it possible to enforce autonomy? Mackness says no, because as soon as one does so the person is not acting autonomously. I see that, of course, but the issue is pretty complex because we are, one might say, always (or usually?) in situations where there are forces outside of us nudging or pushing or shoving or even forcing us in some direction. Whenever I engage in an autonomous action, from my own will and choices, I’m not doing so in a vacuum, and quite often or possibly always there are conditions outside of me that are shaping my motivation to go in one direction or another. So perhaps it’s a matter of degree: how much external pressure can there be on someone and yet we can still say they’re making autonomous choices?

One of the most autonomous learning environments I have experienced is the open online course, like this one. I choose to engage with the #rhizo14 course, to write blog posts (or not), to comment on others’ posts (or not), to discuss things on one or another form of social media (or not), to stick with the course to the end or to decide to stop partway through. I decide why I’m here and what I want to do and not do. No one is giving me anything in the way of formal credit for this course, and I can probably count on 2-3 fingers how many people at my institution would even have a clue what I’m talking about if I said on my CV I took a course in “rhizomatic learning” (which is actually a pretty big number, when you think about it).

But am I completely autonomous in what I choose to do or not do in this course? Mostly yes, but there are also external pressures, even subtle ones, even ones that no one is trying to exert. I have had some really excellent learning experiences in open online courses before (including ETMOOC and ds106, and the thing is, I felt like I got so much out of those courses in part because I was very actively involved and there was a wonderful, welcoming community who was too. I keep wanting to replicate that, even though right now I don’t have the time to devote to #rhizo14 to really do so. Still, I feel a kind of pressure to do more than I actually have time to do in order to engage more, to try to get that wonderful sense of community and connection I’ve had before. And, to be completely honest, to feel like others are reading what I have to say and finding it interesting enough to continue reading long blog posts and then hopefully leaving a comment is also a motivation for me. And, to be even more completely honest, I also have this sense that there’s a party going on amongst a number of people I really respect and I don’t want to miss out. It’s like being part of a group in a social sense, feeling like one is doing what others one likes and respects are doing.

Now, I wouldn’t say there is a sense of “force” happening in my participation in #rhizo14, but it’s also true that some or all of those motivations come from pressures I would locate outside of me, even though I’ve taken them in as my own motivations. The ones about wanting others to read what I have to say and to feel part of a party with those I respect–those don’t feel to me like part of my choices, like part of me, but rather things that I experience as coming from external sources even though now they are part of my own motivational set.

In a “formal” course

In a more formal learning environment (by which I mean a school or university, or an online course, or a training course, or other environment for which learners get some kind of formal credit), it seems to me that the external pressures are significantly greater just by the nature of the situation. There is some kind of “enforcing” going on just by the teacher/instructor/professor having the power of granting or withholding credit, as well as, sometimes, marks. Some of these situations seem to involve more enforcing than others, only because in primary, middle and some secondary schooling students don’t have a whole lot of choice as to whether or not to be there at all, nor what, exactly, they’ll be studying (I did have some choice among classes in high school, but not as much as in university. Of course, in university there are still required courses). This means that there is a good deal of pressure on students pushing them towards doing certain things in their learning, and some of that is coming from the teacher.

This is all very obvious, of course, only it’s important to point out when we’re thinking about whether it’s possible to enforce autonomy or independence, because it seems to me that any degree of giving students the chance to be autonomous when they’re getting credit and/or marks for their work also has an element of pressure, of force if you will. Yes, I can say students are free to choose to pursue various areas of study in my class, to go their own route with a project, and in that way I’m allowing them more autonomy than if I didn’t give them these choices; but nevertheless, they have to do something, and what they choose to do will be influenced in part by what they think will earn them a good mark or at least allow them to pass the class, or what others students will think (if they have to present their work in front of others). They could, of course, just refuse to do anything and fail, or drop the class, but there’s a good deal of pressure not to do that as well.

When I was thinking about whether there are any ways in which I engage in something like enforced autonomy or independence in my courses I thought of things like asking students to come up with their own essay topics, asking them to blog about what they are reading/what we’re discussing and thereby ensure that everyone has a voice (not just those who speak most often in class), giving them the chance to do a different sort of assignment than a traditional academic essay, requiring them to lead class discussion rather than me, and the like. In each of these cases, though I’m giving them some choice in what they want to talk about/how they want to structure their assignments, there is still a good deal of pressure on them that constrains what they actually choose. How many will choose to do a non-traditional assignment when they aren’t used to how such things might be evaluated and aren’t sure how to do them well (even if I provide a rubric), so the safest route is to do what they already know? How many will give a very non-traditional class presentation and lead discussion with a question that really goes far beyond what I’ve said and emphasized in class? In choosing a topic for a research paper, most will go for what seems already “important” in terms of what we’ve emphasized in class and what is most popular in the secondary literature in that particular philosophical area (which differs from decade to decade and century to century). The fact that I’m giving them a mark makes this even stronger.

My point is that there is always some element of pressure, of nudging of learners by the instructor, by other students, by the social and disciplinary milieu in which their learning takes place. So perhaps the paradox of enforcing autonomy is a matter of degree. At what point do my requirements for my course move from leaving space for autonomy with an acceptable amount of pressure from me and others on what choices are actually going to be made, to exhibiting a problematic amount of force? Perhaps the more space I allow for students to make autonomous choices the better, and yet perhaps even then I’m still, just by the nature of my role and the social situation in which it inheres, doing some “enforcing.”

Catherine Morland: more interesting than I first thought

In Arts One this term we read Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (we’re reading the “Oxford World’s Classics” edition, edited by James Kinsely and John Davie, so that’s what the page numbers below refer to). In class we discussed how the protagonist, Catherine Morland, seems not a terribly interesting character. She’s naive, simple-minded, easily swayed by what she reads in gothic novels, too ready to submit to the knowledge and judgment of Henry Tilney as superior to her own, and well, just rather dull.

But the more I thought about the text, the more I began to wonder if there’s a more positive way to view her character. Basically, I was wondering why in the world Austen would choose this type of girl to be a protagonist, especially when she’s written so many more interesting female protagonists in other novels (yes, this was a very early novel, but still…).

We discussed in class how Northanger Abbey can be read as a social commentary on the horrors of social life being just as bad or worse than those of gothic fiction. And I was thinking about how Catherine is really an outside to social customs and manners in much of the text. There is so much she doesn’t understand, that she misses. For example:

She is confused when John Thorpe says two contrary things on one of their carriage rides. This is because “she had not been brought up to understand the propensities of a rattle, nor to know how many idle assertions and impudent falsehoods the excess of vanity will lead” to (46).
Similarly, she can’t understand it when General Tilney says he doesn’t care about the dinner that Henry will provide for them, while at the same time meaning exactly the opposite: “…why should he say one thing so positively, and mean another all the while, was most unaccountable! How were people, at that rate, to be understood?” (156).
At first when the flirtation between Isabella and Captain Tilney is starting, she seems very naive and thinks that Isabella must simply not understand what she is doing, and Catherine feels she ought to try to warn her of the fact that the Captain may be falling in love with her (106)
Catherine is entirely ignorant of John Thorpe’s affection towards her, and that she encouraged him in thinking she might be willing to marry him (90-91, 104-105).

All of these things and more suggest that Catherine is just socially ignorant, that she doesn’t understand the usual customs and what certain behaviours mean. We can look at her as just a simple-minded country girl who is being introduced to society and failing at it, but maybe there’s something else going on.

Perhaps we could look at Catherine as a lens through which to see the social norms and customs from the outside, as it were, so as to be able to see them as strange. I mean when you think about it, it is unaccountable that one should say one thing and mean entirely the opposite. How can people be understood that way? And why would someone who is seemingly happily engaged flirt with someone else in such a way as Isabella does? Why must being friendly and polite and entirely honest mean that someone else takes one’s words as meaning one is in love with that person? What the General did to Catherine really is entirely incomprehensible.

Catherine’s mother sums it up well when she says of the General’s actions in throwing Catherine out of the house: “it is something not at all worth understanding” (173).

Perhaps it takes an outsider’s viewpoint to make the insanity of what the social situation of marriage, especially for women, makes people do. In that sense, I wonder if we are to empathize with Catherine, and agree with Henry when he praises her because she is “open, candid, artless, guileless, with affections strong but simple, forming no pretensions, and knowing no disguise” (152).

Maybe she is not just simple-minded as I originally thought. Or maybe she is to some extent, but that this is not such a bad thing. She refuses to play the social games (or perhaps one should rather say that she can’t because she doesn’t know how and doesn’t see why one should), and yet she still “wins” (and Isabella loses–she gets neither James nor Captain Tilney).

Now I kind of like Catherine. Well, at least more than I did.

Digital safety in student blogging (for #OOE13)

I’m participating in a course called “Open Online Experience 2013″ (which actually goes until May 2014!), which is a professional development course for educators, focused on educational technology. This month we are focusing on digital literacy and digital citizenship, and earlier this week we had a Twitter chat about these topics that really got me thinking about my role in helping students think carefully about what and how they put online when I’m asking them to do blog posts and comments.

Because I’m so busy with so many things at the moment, all I could manage to do was make an audio recording of my thoughts (much faster than writing them out). I did it while driving, taking a cue from Scottlo at ds106 radio, who often does live broadcasts and recordings while driving to work.

I put my phone in my cup holder, shielded a bit so it wouldn’t move too much (a suggestion by Scottlo), and used the built-in mic to record the sound. It’s actually not too bad, considering. I had tried earlier with the microphone attached to my headphones, and the sound was much worse–the car noise really drowned out my voice. In this one, the main problem is the clicks and bonks you can hear from me switching gears, since the phone was right next to the gear box. But still, it’s not too bad.

It’s about seven minutes long, so it shouldn’t take too much time to listen to!

If you just click the link below, it should play…let me know if it doesn’t work.

digital literacy in philosophy blog posts