My Work

Why Fiction is Good for You

Until recently, we’ve only been able to guess about the actual psychological effects of fiction on individuals and society. But new research in psychology and broad-based literary analysis is finally taking questions about morality out of the realm of speculation.

This research consistently shows that fiction does mold us. The more deeply we are cast under a story’s spell, the more potent its influence. In fact, fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than nonfiction, which is designed to persuade through argument and evidence. Studies show that when we read nonfiction, we read with our shields up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally, and this seems to make us rubbery and easy to shape.

iPad in Education: Resources Worth Exploring

[I]f you’re REALLY interested in keeping current on the ways that educators are using iPads in the classroom, don’t forget to check out the #ipaded hashtag on Twitter. That’s a constantly updated stream of information being curated by other educators who are interested in using iPads in the classroom.

10 Great Books to Help You Think, Create, & Communicate Better

(2) Design For How People Learn.
This book is quick and easy to read. If you are already well-read on e-learning and the brain and memory, etc. then there may not be much new here for you, but it has good material for professionals and students that can help them understand how people learn and how to design learning experiences (like presentations) that do a better job of engaging audiences. For me it was an interesting review of many of the key concepts in e-learning. A much deeper (and expensive) related book is e-Learning and the Science of Instruction.

Yes, Professors Work Hard, But…

So the problem isn’t that college professors don’t work hard–clearly most do. The problem is that the working lives they lead more closely resemble the working lives of writers, artists, and musical composers than they do of the working lives of other upper-middle-class professionals: odd hours and feast-or-famine working schedules; bursts of creative intensity punctuated by relative idleness, long periods that can strike outsiders as unproductive but that actually generate intense creativity down the road. Someone–students, parents, taxpayers, managers of university endowments–has to pay for this sort of lifestyle, of course. Someone has to judge whether one of its end results–reams of scholarship that, as Mark Bauerlein has argued on Minding the Campus–may be “superb” in quality but seldom gets read or cited–is worth all the expenditures and the apparent waste.

Not sure I agree with this, but it is something to think about.

Ogham Enigma

It probably comes as a surprise to most people to find out that the earliest extant manuscript to include any text written in the Ogham script is an early 12th century English manuscript copy of a work by the late Anglo-Saxon monk Byrhtferth (Byrhtferð) rather than one of the more famous Irish manuscripts that include descriptions of the Ogham script, such as the Book of Ballymote or the Yellow Book of Lecan. But although the origin of Old Irish texts about Ogham such as Auraicept na n-Éces (“The Scholar’s Primer”) and In Lebor Ogaim (“The Book of Oghams”) undoubtedly predates Byrhtferth’s work, the only extant manuscript copies of these texts are later than the Byrhtferth manuscript.

I had never heard of it, but I want to learn more about things, so this was very relevant to me.

There is also a video of the diagram being used in television.

Original image Credit: Running Shoes by Timothy Takemoto

Licensed Creative Commons Attribution on April 13, 2012

Slide by Bill Ferriter

http://bit.ly/temperedradical

The image and the words are thought provoking. Are they correct?

I think that my college freshmen are motivated by technology a little bit, perhaps more than the shoes and socks metaphor shows. They want to be able to use their phones in class to take a quiz. They want to be creating digital presentations–and then watching them in class together to show off their stuff. They do not want to be reading a book and taking a pen and paper test all the time.

Technology may not be the prime motivator though. They might just want to do something different in class. But I’m okay with that, too.

“By its very nature, meaningful work is hard; people often get the greatest satisfaction from overcoming the most difficult challenges. Failure is inevitable along the path to innovation” (3031 of 4703).

“Even in a hostile work environment… a deft lower-level manager can sometimes interrupt a vicious cycle of negative inner work life and setbacks” (3048 of 4703).

“Progress lives in the everyday” (3103 of 4703).

from Amabile and Kraven’s The Progress Principle:

Progress
Which one or two events today indicated either a small win or a possible breakthrough? (Describe briefly.)

Catalysts
Did the team have clear short- and long-term goals for meaningful work?

Did team members have sufficient autonomy to solve problems and take ownership of the project?

Did they have all the resources they needed to move forward efficiently?

Did they have sufficient time to focus on meaningful work?

Did I give or get them help when they needed or requested it? Did I encourage team members to help one another?

Did I discuss lessons from today’s successes and problems with my team?

Did I help ideas flow freely within the group?

Nourishers
Did I show respect to team members by recognizing their contributions to progress, attending to their ideas, and treating them as trusted professionals?

Did I encourage team members who faced difficult challenges?

Did I support team members who had a personal or professional problem?

Is there a sense of personal and professional affiliation and camaraderie within the team?

Inner work life
Did I see any indications of the quality of my [students' ] inner work lives today?
Perceptions of the work, team, management, firm
Emotions
Motivations
What specific events might have affected inner work life today?

Action plan
What can I do tomorrow to strengthen the catalysts and nourishers identified and provide ones that are lacking? (2937 of 4703)

Other notes from The Progress Principle.

“even in tough circumstances, it makes sense to take strategic measures to keep their workers creatively and productively engaged” (Amabile and Kramer 1118 of 4703).

creativity and productivity lead to positive inner work life and positive inner work life leads to creativity and productivity (aka the progress loop) (1153 of 4703)

“design each job so that… people gain knowledge about the results of their effort” (1383 of 4703) because feedback is good and feedback from the work itself is best

Progress is the most important positive trigger.
If you feel that you are making progress, you are happier about the work and so make more progress.

Video games feature progress bars… (1454 of 4703)…
What if classes had progress bars? You would have to know approximately how many assignments there were.

Work is “simply part of being human” (1486 of 4703).

“The effect of setbacks on emotions is stronger than the effect of progress. … [T]he effect of setbacks is not only opposite… it is greater. The power of setbacks to diminish happiness is more than twice as strong as the power of progress to boost happiness.
…
Small losses can overwhelm small wins” (1531 of 4703).
I thought they said earlier that progress was the strongest principle. Why would setbacks overwhelm progress?

“Consistent daily progress by individual employees fuels both the success of the organization and the quality of those employees’ inner work lives” (1671 of 4703).

“Having clear goals orients people as they approach any job” (1704 of 4703).

Progress is first (of the positives?).

Catalysts (support) are second. Here is the list of what teachers should be doing:
1. Setting clear goals.
2. Allowing autonomy.
3. Providing resources.
4. Giving enough time–but not too much.
5. Help with the work.
6. Learning from problems and successes.
7. Allowing ideas to flow. (1776 of 4703)

Something for administrators to consider:
“Three main climate forces shape the specific catalyst and inhibitor events that occur inside an organization” (1818 of 4703)
consideration for people and their ideas
coordination
communication (1826)

Sometimes administration needs a clue bat. Just saying.

Nourishers:
1. respect (2237 of 4703)
2. encouragement
3. emotional support
4. affiliation

“show the team how to learn from failure” (2769 of 4703)
This is something that I would like to learn how to do better. I think it is something that Mikee does well.

I have always been exceedingly goal oriented. I was six when I decided where I would go to college, nine when I picked my PhD school. (I was 25 before I even heard of my PhD topic area and, huzzah!, turns out my PhD school was one of the top 2.)

But today, reading about 5-year plans, I realized that I have been working on five-minute plans.

What do I absolutely have to do right now? (Those urgent and important things are starting to be stacked so high they may topple, like blocks under an unsteady hand.)

Despite the urgency and the importance of those stacks, I have created a ten-day plan, so I am moving beyond the five-minute web I’ve been living in.

I hope to soon be able to create a four-month schedule for my summer grant creation and book writing extravaganza. I am fairly sure, however, that the ten-day plan will take the whole ten days to finish, so it will be on day 11 before I have time to stop and work out a schedule.

My students are constantly being told they need to start early. I am working on that again myself.

I am reading The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. Interesting book.

But one part in particular made me think of creative writing professors, so I thought I would pass it on–in case you haven’t heard it already.

For one experiment, we recruited seventy-two creative writers. When they arrived (individually) at the psychology laboratory, they all wrote a brief poem on the topic “Snow” (after all, it was Boston in the winter). We used these poems as a pre-measure of creativity, before we altered the writers’ motivational state. Then we randomly assigned one-third of the writers to the extrinsic motivation condition. We gave them a short “Reasons for Writing” questionnaire that asked them to rank-order seven reasons for being a writer; all of those items, according to previous research, were extrinsic, such as, “You have heard of cases where one best-selling novel or collection of poems has made the author financially secure.” The rank-ordering was irrelevant; the point was to have these writers spend a few minutes getting into an extrinsically motivated frame of mind. One-third of the writers filled out a “Reasons for Writing” questionnaire that had only intrinsic reasons, such as, “You enjoy the opportunity for self-expression.” The final third of writers (the control group) spent a few minutes reading an irrelevant story.

Then all of the writers wrote a second short poem on “Laughter.” After all seventy-two writers had participated, a different group of twelve writers independently judged the creativity levels of all poems (without knowing which had been produced by whom). The results were simple and clear. Although the pre-measure poems showed no differences, the set of poems produced by writers who had contemplated extrinsic reasons for writing were significantly lower in creativity than the others. In other words, intrinsic motivation was more conducive to creativity than extrinsic motivation. (Amabile and Kramer 945 of 4705)

The experiment is reported in T. M. Amabile’s “Motivation and Creativity.”

Just thought it was fascinating and so worth retyping!

I also sent it two colleagues I thought might appreciate it.

I am trying to practice the positive sense-making that leads (according to the authors) to a creative streak longer than the positive mood lasts. I actually re-visioned something that happened in class this afternoon to find a positive way to view it and it helped improve my day significantly.

Can we help our students be more creative on their exams in this way? I am going to have to think about it.

I taught an introduction to linguistics course for the first time ever this year.

The difficulty level of getting a course you haven’t studied for 20 years two weeks before class starts is high. Thankfully, the professor who had taught the class for the last 20 years not only helped me with the syllabus and calendar, she gave me all her linguistics texts and her entire file folder of relevant studies and information on the course. She also met with me once a week to answer questions I had about the course, when I had finished preparing for the next week. Even with all her help I spent at least the first six weeks of school spending 20 hours a week preparing for the class.

By the end of the class we were studying things I already have an interest in and so I felt more prepared for the class. Then I would spend a few hours a week preparing. That’s more normal.

What went well and what else might I do with it?
RATs The idea of quizzes that the individuals took themselves and then took as a group was a positive one. I thought it was somewhat a waste of time at the beginning, but really the folks who thought they knew the answer talked through their different decisions. I am much happier about that now.

I may even integrate RATs into my literature course.

2 Research papers The two papers were a good idea. I like the idea of requiring primary research for Paper 1 and students did a great job with that overall.

I want primary research with Paper 2 as well; however, I have decided that a paper without primary research for Paper 2 just starts with a B rather than starting with an A. So the only way to make an A is with primary research.

Self-created quizzes For the last two chapters, I had students write out their own quizzes. There were true/false questions (10 per student) and a single essay question with the answer. These were the last two RATs. I think overall these worked well.

They also gave me a test bank of questions to use for the exam and/or for next semester. I think one good thing to do would be to have the students do this for one chapter per exam. Self-testing helps the students do better on exams. This is one way of requiring it without having the students do additional work.

This semester I had the 10 true/false as open book and the essay question during class. I think that works reasonably well.

Graduate requirements Graduate student report Requiring the graduate students to give a conference level presentation (15-20 minutes) over their first paper is also a good idea. They must figure out how to limit the 12 pages they wrote to 7 for the talk. They must also reconsider the roles of writing and speaking.

I might also see if there are other classes who might incorporate the same thing and have our students have a colloquium on campus when everyone is presenting their research.

What will I do differently, why, and how?
Study guides The study guides change based on the book used and I really didn’t have the time to create study guides that aligned with the book and learn the material myself.

Next time I teach the class, though, the study guides would be an awesome review option for me and would be helpful for the students, especially as it would be for each chapter or topic.

In addition, assuming I ever offer a cumulative final again, I would not have to create a new study guide, but could simply have the students look through the semester’s study guides for help.

Practice exams There did not seem to be a lot of value in having the practice exams before the exams. It was somewhat useful, if the students took it individually and then retook it as a group, for the same reason the quizzes were good.

Perhaps I will continue to do that for test one, but after that I think I will do something different. From now on I will put the practice exam up an entire week before an exam and take it down the day of an exam. That means if the students want to look at it to study they can. They can even ask questions about the exam in class, during the class before the exam. But we won’t be spending time taking a test as a quiz grade.

Blogging The former professor had multiple blogging assignments at the end of the semester. I did not actually get to all of them. I was trying to make the load lighter. I figured out, however, that the students were just not doing their class work until right before class, so I think that I will reinstitute blogging.

The students will be asked to find something in each chapter (after the first test) that interested them and read an article on the topic. A strong popular article was just as acceptable as a scholarly journal for this and I think I will keep that the same.

Blogging addition I offered as extra credit finding an article or cultural artifact that related to the readings and posting on it as well. This worked for the better students, but not even all of them took advantage.

I may require that the students post an example of an experience once a week OR that I have a discussion post that the students must respond to once a week OR that once per test period they have to both post and comment.

If I do the latter, which I am leaning towards, I will give more points to those who have posted before the week of the exam. That will allow others to be able to comment outside of exam time.

Graduate requirements Blogging Blogging is something I can utilize for all the students better. For the graduate students, I think I will start requiring that they read one schlolarly article (or something really good from the files) each week and post by Friday noon. They will have to summarize the article and discuss how what was said in the article works with what we are talking about in class. They will also have to give a correct citation for the source.

Then I can add to the other students’ assignments that they must comment on the blog posts once a month. Additional comments, substantive and related, within that month will count as extra credit.

Graduate requirements Papers I think requiring the graduate students to do papers that are twice as long as the undergraduates was a good idea. I think having them write a literature review on a particular topic from the second set of research options as the second paper is also a good idea.

Next time, I will require twenty sources and they must have ten within the last ten years. If they start with those, they will have a much easier time determining which are the seminal works, by seeing which sources are cited most often by those ten.

In his book Outliers Gladwell offers the route to becoming a genius. It is not something you have to be born into. It is not a culture, time, place, or socioeconomic status per se. It is something that anyone can develop, if it is important to that person.

So what is this single step that we (you and I, on our own, but perhaps together) can take to become a genius?

It is the willingness to keep working.

Gladwell was building on, among other things, the work of Dr. Alan Schoenfeld of Berkeley, who videotaped students talking through math problems. Schoenfeld found, and Gladwell discusses, that being good at math is a function of success and willingness to keep working (246).

Students who are willing to keep working, trying to figure out what it is that needs to be done, are more likely to succeed. That success makes them more likely to be willing to work on a problem even longer the next time.

Math geniuses, like my eldest son, are folks who are willing to sit and fiddle with a math question for twenty or thirty minutes, trying to figure out how it should work. I know that my eldest does this. I have seen him do it.

Confession time:
I have spent the last four years working very hard at teaching. I’ve taught 5/5/1, 6/6/2, the equivalent of 5/5/0 (developmental classes), and 4/4/1 (the 4s being new preps). I have worked on making my presentation better, my material stronger, and the relevance to my students high.

What I have not done is kept up with educational theories, learning theories, composition pedagogy, etc.

I have not been working on the problems, finding out how other people have said I might do it better. I haven’t even, most of the time, been working on seeing how my colleagues are doing what they do, to see if they can offer me ideas for doing it better.

Immediate response and longer-term study plan:
Recently I have come to feel this lack fiercely and I am attempting to remedy it by reading, taking notes, thinking about, anaylyzing, evaluating, synthesizing, and applying in areas that I think would benefit my teaching.

While right now it is still somewhat haphazard (I have books in a list of recommendations, for example.), I am willing to work at being a better teacher by reading not just the recommended lists, but the works cited in the recommended lists. I am going to graduate school–in my own home and office–for being a genius at teaching.

In addition, I am going to take my present attempts at improvement–including discussions with colleagues, careful reflection over classroom experience and follow-up tweaks, and haphazard blog reading–and develop them into habits and schedules that will help me become a better educator.

I want to be more than acceptable in this field I have chosen, thoughtfully and giddily, as my own. I want to be superior. But I have not been as careful about creating and working towards micro-goals to improve my teaching as I should have been.

Resolved: Dr. Davis will work at being an excellent, superb educator in her chosen field through the acquisition of new knowledge through theoretical readings, creation of micro-goals, implementation of new knowledge, and intense reflection and self-evaluation followed by new and improved approaches to/in the classroom experience.