teaching
Labor vs. management?
07/05/2011 12:19
I agree, pulling a bunch of teachers together and building a “school,” whether physical or virtual, is a job — and involves a skill-set — that nowadays “belongs” to administrators. Not unlike the way publishing, marketing and distributing books is currently “owned” by a specific (and shrinking) group of people. But this wasn’t always the case.
I’m fascinated by the little regional publishers of the early 19th century. Yes, the economics of their situation was different: transportation and communication costs were often much higher than they are now. But so were per-unit production costs. Given those factors, they had a very interesting skill-set. Most of them also published regional newspapers, almanacs, farming, cultural, and political periodicals. Many of them were involved in radical politics of one type or another: anti-masonic, free-soil, secularist. Whatever niche they chose, they had to know their audience’s interests, have something interesting to say, and master the technical process of getting that message out.
To bring this back to online history, I do think technology provides an opportunity to redefine the basic bundle of skills/tasks/products. A lot of the expense of college for students involves the “administrative” rather than the strictly academic parts: dorms, classrooms, sports teams,…administrators. These are some of the things the web could disintermediate, and lower the cost of education to students. But I agree, educators would have to take on some administrative roles, if we wanted to offer an online alternative that met the current set of accreditation requirements, built during (and FOR) the age of brick and mortar schools.
So the long-term task might be to redefine education so that it belongs to the student rather than the institution. This may make it more “pedestrian” and task-oriented, but also more democratic. The short-term task would be to reverse-engineer the education process, asking ourselves each step of the way, “what is this for?” The very-short term task for me, is to identify an underserved market and some unique, valuable content, and put it out there. Supporting myself this way is not job one. The Arctic Monkeys gave away a lot of free music at first — but the music was great and people came back and bought it.
But further, I’d also say that “labor” is the role teachers chose. They had a hand in setting up the present system. The idea was probably, “okay, what we want to do is mold young minds and do research to extend knowledge in our field. Let’s hire some clerks to take care of the details for us.” So, how did the situation get so far out of hand? Why do schools need so many administrators? Wouldn’t it be in the best interests of both teachers and students, to use technology to eliminate some of this expensive overhead?
But there’s a huge difference between being “labor” and being an individual contributor. Yes, although hopefully it’s new and fresh and important for each student who goes through the survey, after a couple of semesters teaching it, the course is pretty much routine for the teacher. Seems to me, this means two things. First, it’s the process of exposing new students to this material that excites many of us. Second, there’s a difference between the up-front work of creating and implementing a curriculum for the first time, and the work of continuing to teach that survey year after year.
And we’ve got to ask ourselves, what are the real learning outcomes we’re chasing? Sure, it’s important for people to understand how we got where we are, especially if they want to do something about our present problems. That’s the content part we provide in lectures and readings. The work that the students do, though: isn’t that mostly about learning to think critically and to write clearly? Maybe it will turn out that providing effective content and being a critical thinking or a writing coach are different skills. After all, they’re done by different people in the present scheme of things. Professors lecture; TAs lead interpretive discussions and grade papers.
I’m not suggesting technology directs us toward a particular arrangement at this point — maybe it does, but I don’t see that yet. What I do think, is that the web allows us to question everything; not doing so suggests we like the way things are.
One week in...
09/15/2010 11:31
So the semester has been underway for about a week now. The days are getting more fall-like, and the classes and discussion sections have changed the character of time on campus. I’m having a lot more contact with people, and a lot fewer big unbroken blocks of time to read and write. Not a bad thing, just something to get used to.
My field reading seems to be getting tighter; more focused. There’s a time limit, and I’ve actually started thinking past the comprehensive exams and even the PhD. Telling myself, I’ll get to this or that book later, but not right now. I suppose that’s also my way of admitting that I can’t read everything ever written on my field topics, before the exams.
After exams, I’ll be “legal” to teach UMass continuing education classes, and I’ll feel somehow more “authorized” to offer my services at community and state colleges. With luck, I’ll pick up some teaching work while I’m writing my dissertation. Another good reason to have it half done when I take the exams.
This fall I’m TA-ing American History (Colonial to 1877). There should be lots of material in here for me to think about. I want to watch how the instructor does her thing, get a sense of how the students are responding, and think really hard about what I’d want to be saying in each of these lectures, if it was my class. And of course, I can test out some of those ideas in my sections. At the first one, I went a little deeper into the background of these conquistadors we started with. I think being acquainted with just a tiny bit of European history (at least the reconquista) helps the students have a little better sense of who these guys were, and why they behaved the way they did toward the natives. And details like the 30-generation christian/muslim war in Spain and military technologies that let the Spaniards stand out of range of their enemies and mow them down, give a really contemporary feel to the material -- and suggest reasons why we’re interested in this history in the first place.
My field reading seems to be getting tighter; more focused. There’s a time limit, and I’ve actually started thinking past the comprehensive exams and even the PhD. Telling myself, I’ll get to this or that book later, but not right now. I suppose that’s also my way of admitting that I can’t read everything ever written on my field topics, before the exams.
After exams, I’ll be “legal” to teach UMass continuing education classes, and I’ll feel somehow more “authorized” to offer my services at community and state colleges. With luck, I’ll pick up some teaching work while I’m writing my dissertation. Another good reason to have it half done when I take the exams.
This fall I’m TA-ing American History (Colonial to 1877). There should be lots of material in here for me to think about. I want to watch how the instructor does her thing, get a sense of how the students are responding, and think really hard about what I’d want to be saying in each of these lectures, if it was my class. And of course, I can test out some of those ideas in my sections. At the first one, I went a little deeper into the background of these conquistadors we started with. I think being acquainted with just a tiny bit of European history (at least the reconquista) helps the students have a little better sense of who these guys were, and why they behaved the way they did toward the natives. And details like the 30-generation christian/muslim war in Spain and military technologies that let the Spaniards stand out of range of their enemies and mow them down, give a really contemporary feel to the material -- and suggest reasons why we’re interested in this history in the first place.
U.S. History
12/29/2009 17:30
Last semester I TAed a class in U.S. History, 1876 to the present. I thought it went fairly well, but there were some things I thought I'd change, if I had it all to do myself. So, rather than forget what those things were, I went ahead today and wrote up a syllabus of how I would teach the class. Might not be the ultimate -- if I ended up teaching it several times, it would probably develop some more each time. I just wanted to use what I remembered of the students reactions to the material (and my own) to see what it would look like...
One thing I wasn't happy with was the emphasis on generational conflict. We covered it in the Victorian era, and then again in the 20s, the 50s and the 60s. There were some things we passed by -- there's not a lot of time to cover nearly a century and a half, after all. Another thing was (and maybe I'll get in trouble with some older faculty members for this, but here goes), I think the focus on Viet Nam was overdone. And I don't think you can really sustain the argument that the 60s hippie movement was as historically important as Civil Rights or the Women's movement. So I dumped it in favor of the environment, which I think is going to turn out to be historically big.
Anyway, I now have something I can show people, if I go looking for adjunct or continuing ed. jobs while I'm studying. Should probably put together an undergrad Environmental history syllabus too...
One thing I wasn't happy with was the emphasis on generational conflict. We covered it in the Victorian era, and then again in the 20s, the 50s and the 60s. There were some things we passed by -- there's not a lot of time to cover nearly a century and a half, after all. Another thing was (and maybe I'll get in trouble with some older faculty members for this, but here goes), I think the focus on Viet Nam was overdone. And I don't think you can really sustain the argument that the 60s hippie movement was as historically important as Civil Rights or the Women's movement. So I dumped it in favor of the environment, which I think is going to turn out to be historically big.
Anyway, I now have something I can show people, if I go looking for adjunct or continuing ed. jobs while I'm studying. Should probably put together an undergrad Environmental history syllabus too...
