TCCTA Blog

Happy Holidays from TCCTA!

The Blog is signing off for a few days. Don't forget to check the TCCTA Web site often for the latest news and information in 2008—not to mention timely updates on the annual convention in Dallas.

Have a safe and happy holiday!

Art Tour and Exhibition Offered at TCCTA Convention

On Friday morning, February 22, during the TCCTA convention in Dallas, the Art Section will sponsor a tour of the Meadows Museum, on the campus of Southern Methodist University. Bus transportation for registered attendees and guests will be provided from The Fairmont Dallas, the TCCTA headquarters site for the convention.

Included in the tour is a special exhibition entitled Jerry Bywaters: Interpreter of the Southwest and Lone Star Printmaker.

This exhibition, featured in the museum’s first floor galleries, will explore different facets of Bywaters’s paintings—landscapes, architecture and urban themes, portraiture, and genre scenes—as well as Bywaters’ career as a mural painter. The works of art will be supplemented with archival holdings from the artist’s personal papers in the Jerry Bywaters Collection on Art of the Southwest, housed at SMU’s Hamon Arts Library.

Extra Credit: A "Lawsuit Waiting to Happen"

An experienced administrator paints a grim picture of allowing students extra credit that is not configured into the syllabus from the start of the semester. The warning appears in a continuing series (a blog with comments) in Inside Higher Ed. called "Confessions of a Community College Dean," The blog appears regularly and is available here.

It may be something to think about as you make plans for next semester. Doing a desperate student a favor can result in a civil rights lawsuit, particularly if the extra credit is not offered to everyone from the very beginning, according to the article.

The author feels the same way about a similar subject, makeups:

I have a similar worry about makeup exams. A wise erstwhile colleague once shared her secret for getting around makeup exams: she’d give, say, four tests in her class, and count the best three. The students either stepped up or dropped the class. It struck me as brilliant, and I used it in my own classes to wonderful effect. Not having to distinguish “excused” from “unexcused” absences meant that I had to stop playing “lie detector” when students told me stories about their lives. Grades reflected actual performance, rather than creative whining. Students either got their drama under control, or dropped the class and tried again when they were ready.

TeacherTube Offers Instructional Tips

Everyone has heard of YouTube, the popular site for online sharing of entertainment and personal videos.

Now comes TeacherTube, which offers videos for teachers that take the form of mini-lessons, showing "how to" accomplish certain practical classroom tasks. While the site if tailored largely for K-12 teachers, many of the lessons can easily apply to college instruction.

Recent clips include: "Narrations in PowerPoint," "How to Use Podcasts in the Classroom," "Paper Trained Teachers in a Video Game World," "Starting a Google Image Search," and a number of lessons in math and science.

Creationist School Seeks Coordinating Board Approval to Train Science Teachers

Next month the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board will be asked to approved a master's degree program in science education. The school seeking approval is the non-profit Institute for Creation Research in Dallas wants to train future science teachers with an online curriculum.

Naturally there is controversy attached to such a request. An excellent background story is provided by the Dallas Morning News (registration required). The article reviews the turmoil surrounding the Texas Education Agency, where a science curriculum specialist was compelled to resign for allegedly "taking sides" in the battle over teaching evolution in the public schools.

The Institute for Creation Research was previously located in California, but moved to Dallas.

From the Dallas Morning News piece:

Patricia Nason, chairwoman of the institute's science education department, said that, despite the institute's name, students learn evolution along with creationism.

"Our students are given both sides," said Dr. Nason, who has a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from Texas A&M University. "They need to know both sides, and they can draw their own conclusion."

And:

That's what scares people like Dan Quinn of the Texas Freedom Network, which also opposes teaching creationism in public schools.

"It just seems odd to license an organization to offer a degree in science when they're not teaching science," Mr. Quinn said.

"What we're seeing here is another example of how Texas is becoming the central state in efforts by creationists to undermine science education, especially the teaching of evolution."

A group of educators and officials from the state Coordinating Board visited the campus in November and met with faculty members. The group found that the institute offered a standard science education curriculum that would prepare them to take state licensure exams, said Glenda Barron, an associate commissioner of the board.

Dr. Barron said the program was held to the same standards that any other college would have to meet.

"The master's in science education, we see those frequently," she said. "What's different – and what's got everybody's attention – is the name of the institution."

The advisory group that approved the plan Friday includes professors and administrators from six colleges – two public and four affiliated with religious institutions.

One member of the team that visited the school has a background in math and science education. But no one on the team or the panel that gave approval Friday has a background in pure science, records show.

Attend Yale Over the Holidays!

The list of prestigious universities offering lectures free of charge expanded recently with "Open Yale Courses." According to the home page, the new program:

Provides free and open access to seven introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn.

Courses currently offered for viewing online at any time include Astronomy, Modern Poetry, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, and Religion, demonstrating the school's wish to "reflect the values of a liberal arts education."

For community college instructors teaching introductory courses, viewing such lectures could provide a way to update disciplinary trends from noted authorities—way before textbook revisions hit the shelves. Two-year college educators will likely note amazing similarities in teaching techniques and student questions. (Plus, perhaps perversely, it's comforting to view a Yale professor's discomfort as students arrive late to class, and ask questions that have already been answered—if they would only arrive on time or read the syllabus.)

The "Open Yale Courses" are available here, without paying Yale tuition and no tests. Beat Harvard!

Parents of Middle-Schoolers Often Unprepared for College

Increasingly, efforts to get parents geared up to prepare both themselves and their kids for college have focused on the middle school years. Apparently this period is crucial in order to establish the right academic foundation and also to prepare for the looming financial burden.

According to a new report from the non-profit Institute for Higher Education Policy, there are serious doubts about whether parents are doing what they need to do.

The good news is that parents in all demographic categories understand the importance of education in order for their kids to get ahead.

The report, based on a national survey of 1,800 parents of children in sixth through eighth grade, says that 87 percent of parents expect their kids to go on to college, and that fewer than one percent are certain that college is not likely for their young ones. Although the researchers found that some demographic cohorts—such as Hispanic Americans and parents without a high-school diploma—were less likely than others to be confident that their children would go to college, overwhelming majorities of all groups had college expectations, reflecting a near-universal norm that a college education is necessary today.

However, the report also says that 45 percent of parents had not taken any tangible steps such as looking into the college admissions process, doing research on any specific colleges, or meeting with a teacher or counselor to make sure their child was adequately preparing for college.

The report can be accessed free of charge here.

Self-Employment Increases with Education

We often just assume that our students will graduate and go to work for large companies—or at least for someone else. However, a recent study published by the Small Business Administration finds that educational attainment is also an important determinant of self-employment: Individuals who achieve educationally are more likely to start their own business, particularly in certain industries.

This could help shape career counseling and work force training assessment at all levels of higher education.

From the report:

Goods-producing entrepreneurs tend to be in construction. In the service-producing industries more of the self-employed are in the “soft” service . The “soft” service sector would be industries that are more “white collar” in nature, and not coincidentally, they would also be the ones that would require more college education as preparation.

A summary of the entire study is available here.

"Lecture Capture" Products Gaining Popularity

New software products that "capture" lecture material for students to review on their Ipods, laptops, and other portable devices are starting to make news. A recent article in the New York Times (registration required) describes two products in some detail. (One is produced by Tegrity— a company that has a consortium agreement with TCCTA offering major discounts to members.)

The products take advantage of the fact that most students now possess personal devices making a "replay" of class discussion and lecture possible on a universal scale. According to the article, the professor is not required to do much more than simply activate the device. Students can conduct electronic searches for phrases or illustrations used in class presentations.

One of the students interviewed for the piece is from a Texas Community College:

Laura Martho, a student at El Centro College in Dallas, finds the replay service invaluable. Mrs. Martho, who has four children, commutes 45 minutes each way four days a week to a hospital for clinical work in echocardiology. During the commute, she plugs an iPod into her car radio to review lectures, and checks visuals during lunch. “Every second counts,” she said.

Also from the article:

Ronald Danielson, a vice provost at Santa Clara University, which has a site license from Tegrity, said that students use the review system efficiently. “They are very expert at clicking back and forward to the exact spot they want,” he said. “They don’t listen from start to finish.”

But Professor Danielson said that not everyone on his campus was won over to the replay systems.

“Some professors are concerned about having less-than-perfect classroom moments captured for posterity,” he said.

Are Generations Really All That Different?

It was probably just a matter of time until theories of a new generation of "digital natives" underwent the obligatory debunking. Marc Prensky is probably the best known proponent of the idea that technology has permanently altered the way young people learn—with an added explicit injunction that teachers need to get with the program or else. (Mr. Prensky is also a former keynoter at the TCCTA annual convention.)

Add to this Google's recent efforts to digitize all books, and you have an organization called the Institute for the Future of the Book, which calls itself "a small think-and-do tank investigating the evolution of intellectual discourse as it shifts from printed pages to networked screens" and is "funded generously by the MacArthur Foundation, and affiliated with the University of Southern California."

The group has produced a "book in progress" by Siva Vaidhyanathan, along with a blog in which the author makes some trenchant comments about the whole idea of "digital natives" and, for that matter, generational distinction.

A few passages:

Talking about "Generation X" as if there were some discernable unifying traits or experiences that all people born between 1964 and pick a year after 1974 is about as useful as saying that all Capricorns share some trait or experience. Yes, today one-twelfth of the world will "experience trouble at work but satisfaction in love." Right.

College students in America just are not as digital as we might want to pretend. And even at elite universities, many are not rich enough to be all that digital. Like the rest of us, they will use a tool if the tool works for them and they can afford it. If not, then not.

Talking about digital natives and digital immigrants tends to exagerate the gaps between adults, seen as fumbling and hopelessly out of touch, and youth, seen as masterful. It invites us to see contemporary youth as feral, cut off from all adult influences, inhabiting a world where adults sound like the parents in the old Peanuts cartoons—whah, whah, whah, whah—rather than having anything meaningful to say to their offspring. In the process, it disempowers adults, encouraging them to feel helpless, and thus justifying their decision not to know and not to care what happens to young people as they move into the on-line world.