Network Down! And Other Thoughts On Shifting Our Educational Practice To A Virtual World

Yesterday the Zenith network went down.  While the message that informed us that things were working again said something about a hardware upgrade, it is difficult to believe that they really intended to take the whole system down during finals week.  I suspect that, although tinkering may have been part of the issue, the network was also overwhelmed.

This happens periodically because of two institutional impulses, neither of which is inherently bad, but which together can create havoc:  putting as much of our work on-line as possible and cutting the university budget.  It is only a guess that these two things are related, but I can't recall a year during which we have lost our online services abruptly so very many times (the last occurrence was in the middle of uploading senior honors theses.)  Here's a lesson for you, if you are an aspiring administrator:  money saved by implementing technological innovations often requires spending the same money to maintain the system better, expand it and do ongoing maintenance so that it can handle the additional traffic. 

Of course, it isn't just budget cutting that has produced this massive shift to putting things on-line.  Some things are genuinely better and more convenient, as long as the system stays up.  Submitting grades, registering for courses, and the various approvals that go up the line from faculty member to chair to dean to the provost (or registrar) work much better without the many forms we used to sign, many of which were folded, spindled, mutilated and left to molder at the bottom of backpacks long after the deadline to hand them in had come and gone. 

Eliminating the forms is often articulated as a positive step, in and of itself.  Whipped up by eco-enthusiasms, the university has created many opportunities to do everything pedagogical and organizational through our computers.  Rumor had it that they were going to pick a couple courses to shift onto iPads, and that everyone would get a free iPad to experiment with this.  I was, like, "Pick me! Pick me!" They did not, so I had to buy my own iPad, but I can see how an iPad would enhance a course in all kinds of ways and I wouldn't mind trying it.  The only down side, as far as I can see, is that you can't use any book that doesn't already have an e-edition, and many university presses are not up to speed with this. The up side would be:  if you are teaching Jane Austen or any other text where the copyright has run out, every reading in the course is free.

This semester,  responding to the periodic exhortations to avoid the use of paper whenever possible, saving entire budget lines and forests of trees, I shifted one course entirely onto Moodle, an open source course management system (CMS) that made our work 100% paperless.  All in all, I would say this has been a real success, I have gained a great deal and I have not sacrificed a single thing that I value.  We do not yet teach on-line, mind you, although I fully expect that we will be invited to do so in the future to support the various graduate liberal studies degrees that Zenith offers, and I fully expect this will be greeted with hoots of derision and warnings about the coming Apocalypse.  But the more you fiddle with the various platforms available, and Moodle is the best one I have yet tinkered with, the clearer it becomes how one might easily teach on-line from the comfort of one's own boudoir. In fact, during the snow emergencies this semester I quelled my anxiety about missing too much face-time by putting entire classes up on-line so that they could review the material themselves, with some gentle guidance from me.  I was able to do this using simple applications available on my Mac and my iPhone, without any instruction from anyone, and to my great surprise and pleasure, it actually worked.  Some of the material from those classes has reappeared in subsequent assignments as texts that had, for many students, the greatest impact of any they read in the course.

Now you might say, "Isn't shifting so much of your teaching to the Internet alienating, Professor Radical?  Is encountering you as a virtual professor really what your students are really paying all that fancy-pants tuition for?"  Here is an important point:  they actually saw me twice a week, and they also had a teaching assistant who ran discussion groups outside of class and worked with them on their writing to great effect.  So I am not yet an expert on what you can accomplish without any human contact whatsoever.  That said, after a semester of Moodling, I find that -- other than the possibility of making all assigned texts and everything used in class available in one place -- the latter feature truly improves my relations with my students.  As you move through the course, they can add things that they think are important, and you can tailor future classes to the students who actually enrolled in the course  (as opposed to the fantasy students who might have enrolled, whose interests will exactly match yours, and who will hang on your every word regardless of what you say to them.)  Although I didn't use these functions as much as I might have, there are also numerous functions that permit/force student participation and create opportunities for students to share their ideas with each other.

I would also say that, overall, I found the business of the course (turning work in and returning it) far more straightforward.  Either the paper was, or was not, in the drop box when it is due, and it can be due at midnight if you want, making it more likely that students who work at the last minute will get it done.  There was no haggling about whether the administrative assistant was -- or was not -- in the office at the designated witching hour. There were no papers slid under the office door, and we had no hoo-hah about printers that mysteriously ceased to function at the unluckiest possible moment.  Importantly, exams taken on-line allowed those with accommodations for learning disability to take the extra time they are permitted with absolutely no effort or planning on my part:  this is actually a very big deal in a lecture course, where you can have as many as ten or twelve different diagnoses that require as many different accommodations.  Exams are clocked in by the Moodle, and there is no need for elaborate proctoring arrangements that also, not incidentally, reveal the identities of those with learning disabilities, invite stigma and, I am convinced, often cause students who would perform better with an accommodation to not reveal themselves..

Marking papers is also more fruitful, in my view.  Instead of scribbling graffitti all over their work, I enable the editing function and add comments, re-arrange their sentences so they are grammatical, explain errors of syntax and structure, and so on.  It took less time on my part, was far more legible (in the past, in order to make my point, I would find myself writing elaborate paragraphs at the bottom of the page, and connecting them to the offending passage with a long, curvy arrow.)  By comparing the original (which remains in the drop box) to the graded version (which you upload later) students who wanted to improve (which is nearly all of them) could actually see the differences between the two versions laid out in front of them, rather than trying to figure out from a hopeless sea of red, green what good writing really looks like.

Downsides?  I can't think of one for the pedagogical experience, except that I had to devise new techniques for learning names, something I normally did by handing back graded work and free writing exercises in class. A second issue that will affect some people more than others is simply spending too much time at the keyboard and risking ligament and tendon damage in the

Here's the catch, however. When the system goes down you can't work, unless you have had the foresight and the wit to download all the written work at once,.  Having the university server crash, or become unstable and need to be taken down for maintenance, in the portion of your day or week that you have set aside expressly to mark papers or do final grades does temporary havoc to your sense of control and order, something we faculty prize enormously.  When this happens, there is literally nothing that you can do but turn your computer off and catch up on the episodes of The Borgias that you have missed because of the intensity of the semester's end.

Why this forced work stoppage occurred yesterday at Zenith is anyone's guess, but it seems obvious that it is most likely to occur at exactly the time of year when we are all using the system most intensely -- finals week -- and during which a crash or downtime will also result  the greatest inconvenience.  Universities are going to have to take what they are saving on paper and administrative assistants and redeploy it to hiring more IT people, updating their systems more frequently, and having emergency crews on retainer to monitor the system during moments of abnormally high usage.

Here's my prediction:  ultimately, universities will no longer maintain their own servers, and IT staffs will exist mainly to  work on server space that is rented from Google, Apple or one of the megaliths.  This will make systems more reliable under normal and extraordinary usage.  But it will raise other challenges, one being a possible narrowing of the choices we have as institutions to decide what platforms and software we are using as those who own the servers have greater power over what kinds of innovation they will support.  Another challenge is that, while each of our universities is vulnerable on its own, by linking our fate to the One Big Server (OBS) we become highly vulnerable together:  a breach of security in one location can take us all down. This is something to anticipate and understand before that moment in which change is inevitable but the terms of change have already been decided entirely by corporations.

What Works For Christians Could Work For Academics Too

Pastor Ed Young of the Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas has been urging his flock to improve their emotional well-being by having more sex. In fact, last Sunday he instructed the married couples in his flock to have sex every day prior to coming to church yesterday. The economic downturn (read: Republican trainwreck), in addition to the ordinary problems couples have (adultery, PTSD, child-rearing, exhaustion, quiet and/or open rage, working two or three jobs) are causing people to lose the intimacy that is the key to a healthy marriage, Young argues. In the longer term, the Seven Days of Sex should cause couples to at least double the amount of intercourse they have and “move from whining about the economy to whoopee!”

Well yes indeed. Of course, Young is not the first Christian to suggest this. From Henry Ward Beecher's gospel of love through Marabel Morgan's advice in the Total Woman that women should try sexy tricks like greeting hubby at the door wrapped in Saran Wrap, Christians have emphasized the critical role of sexual intimacy within monogamous marriage. And if you were Henry Ward Beecher, not to mention a few fallen televangelists too, outside of marriage too!

But what about the neglected sex lives of the less devout? I suggest we academics jump on the band wagon too, and apply this concept to the American Historical Association Annual Meeting in New York City, January 2-5, 2009. I hereby command seven days of non-stop sexual activity prior to the meeting: we can drop the monogamous marriage part -- it won't be appropriate, politically correct or legally possible for everyone. This should put smiles on a few faces, shouldn't it? I'm thinking friendlier preliminary interviews, kinder comments at panels, maybe even a little graciousness toward that unfortunate fling-person you did at last year's meeting who turned out not to be in an open relationship after all, or who told everyone you knew that it didn't....really....work....out....so good.

Of course, you have to work up to Seven Days of Sex. So let's all start practicing now. And who knows? Could lead to higher grades for your students, as well as better faculty-administration relations, even in a budget-cutting environment.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.

Why Joe Biden?

Beats me, except for voters like Mother of the Radical (MOTheR), who is a formerly Hillary-supporting Pennsylvania voter and thinks Joe Biden is the bee's knees. The comb over doesn't seem to bother her at all.

But Delaware? Who needs Delaware in a general election? Wait! I know! Except for an accident of colonialism and the fact that it is owned by Dupont, Delaware is actually a county in Pennsylvania. Don't believe it that Obama is eschewing the old "state strategy" by choosing a senator from little, insignificant Delaware as his vice president: the campaign is hoping that Joe will bring in the very important swing state of Pennsylvania (where, by the way, black politicians are not overly popular and gregarious, boot-straps white guys are.)

Of course, I didn't like any of the people on the finals list, except perhaps Evan Bayh. And I was a little afraid of the Governor of Virginia. Given this, maybe Joe will be OK. And his wife is hot. The Michelle-Jill wife ticket is one I can totally get behind.

So what do we think of Joe? Here are some highlights:

On abortion: not so good. Voted for the so-called "partial birth" ban; claims to believe life begins at conception (which is a stance that was invented so that people could fudge their position on abortion and hope Christians wouldn't notice); voted against maintaining the abortion ban on military bases; consistently voted for federal funding for contraception; claims to support Roe strongly, but has voted for a great many laws that have greatly restricted who actually has access to abortion.

Conclusion: Joe is pro-choice, but wants to placate the pro-life crowd (a group of people who are, I think, not that stupid) and is not willing to stand up for a universal right to choose.

On civil rights: voted against court-ordered bussing to desegregate schools; believes gays should be allowed to serve in the military and have civil unions. Believes that gay marriage is probably "inevitable", but that "government should not be able to dictate to religions the definition of marriage" (as if marriage were a religious rather than a political institution); voted for the Defense of Marriage Act which makes it ilegal for the federal government to recognize gay marriages enacted legally by states (because he knows marriage is a political act --duh.)

Conclusion: probably not homophobic, but caters to the homophobic on Sundays and holidays. Has gay friends.

On education: Believes that his vote for No Child Left Behind was an error (good thing his own children didn't go to public school!); doesn't think segregated schools are an issue as long as racial separation isn't enforced by law; voted no on school vouchers in DC, an unsuccessful effort to prevent draining public money into private education corporations who now educate half of the children in the District of Columbia; voted in favor of funds for abstinence education -- $75 million dollars worth -- that was under the Clinton administration!-- as well as for funds to provide information about contraception as part of a comprehensive sex ed package.

Conclusion: not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to education, but has many bases covered. Doesn't quite get it that most minority and poor kids get screwed because middle class and wealthy people of all colors don't have to go to school with them.

In case this leaves you feeling lukewarm to cold on Joe, here's the bright side. Joe received an "F" from the National Rifle Association; a 16% rating from the Christian Coalition; a 0% rating from the National Right to Life Committee (but only a 36% rating from NARAL-ProChoice America); 100% from the NAACP (but only a 78% from those centrist queers at the Human Rights Campaign and a dismal 60% from the American Civil LIberties Union). The United States Chamber of Commerce gave him an anti-business 32%; and the AFL-CIO a 100%, for his pro-union stances.

Oh and the other bright side -- Did I mention that the wife ticket is really hot?

Ask the Radical: The Dreaded Grade Dispute

From time to time, the Radical will take direct questions about how to proceed in delicate matters not occurring at Zenith (refresh your memory of the Blogger Ethic, or just try to imagine the consequences, if you don't understand why she does not address controversial events at Zenith any more.)

This dispatch is just in from the Land of Contingent Labor:

"Dear Professor Radical: I was recently accused of giving a student a failing grade because I am allegedly biased against him. When he lodged the original complaint about the grade, I provided him with all of the reasons for his grade, including not answering assigned questions, not addressing gay people in a class about sexuality, and not answering questions when asked during his presentations even though answering questions was part of what was expected in the presentation. His response to my explanation was to accuse me of reverse discrimination.

"The Chair of my department has chosen to take both the grade dispute and the accusation seriously because of another incident in which a student used a racial slur in my class, and my disagreement with how this was handled.

"Any thoughts on how to address the issue with the student and with the Chair, since I am leaving this job soon anyway?"

Well, first of all, it's good that you are leaving the job. And I would say that even if you and the Chair did not have a vexed relationship stemming from a previous incident, unfortunate as it may seem, s/he is obliged to take a complaint seriously if it has been made (although I hope that s/he has the good sense to correct the student that what is being alleged is *discrimination,* period. "Reverse discrimination" is one of those phrases -- like "partial birth abortion" - that has been specially designed by radical conservatives to give a particular ideological spin to such a situation.)

But what should be done? And what does a faculty member -- contingent or not -- have a right to expect in such a situation? As Director of American Studies off and on I have periodically been asked to step into grade disputes in which both the student and the faculty member are in a state of outrage, and my job, as I perceived it, has been to resolve the situation but not necessarily decide who is telling the truth, even when I think I know. Let me give you two situations, each drawn from real experiences:

1. Student A appeared in my office in tears, saying that Professor X had refused to look at, much less grade, her senior work, because the agreed upon terms of the tutorial (that A and X would meet on a weekly basis to discuss said work) were violated by A. A never showed up for the tutorial appointments, X charged. A, on the other hand, claimed that after much back and forth over meeting times, X was never able to establish a regular time, and often did not show up at times that had been scheduled with A. A became discouraged, stopped trying to schedule appointments, and just wrote the paper. X rebutted this vociferously, claiming that A was "a liar."

What I thought I knew: that A was kind of a sweet, slightly out of it, young woman who I knew superficially and had never, to my knowledge, been involved in a dispute of this kind. I also had no reason to suspect that A was not being truthful, and what she said resonated with other complaints I had received about Professor X. My experience with X was that s/he was extraordinarily creative, somewhat high-strung, more likely to get into disputes with other faculty than some colleagues, forgetful, and unlikely to perceive that s/he had contributed to the misunderstanding, however unintentionally. My instinct was that Student A was probably telling some version of the truth; furthermore, A could not graduate without getting a grade for this work, so somehow a grade needed to be produced lest the dispute get really ugly.

2. I got a call from Faculty Y, saying that s/he was outraged on behalf of student B, who was taking a class with Professor Z. B had turned up in Y's office hours in despair, saying that the term paper that sie wrote for Z had received a failing grade. Y claimed that Z's grade was due to transphobia: that B, as a transgendered student writing on a trans topic, did not hirself believe the work was graded fairly, and furthermore, that in all hir meetings with Z during the term, felt harassed and criticized, tried to do what was asked, but nothing ever seemed to be good enough for Z. Y demanded that I confront Z about transphobia and insist that the paper be re-graded fairly.

What I thought I knew: I had taught B, who was an average student but had not distinguished hirself in any way that was apparent to me; Z was a young colleague, with very high standards, whose courses were universally perceived as quite rigorous. But Z was also queer, very politically conscious, and a devoted teacher; therefore I thought that discrimination against a particular student was unlikely. My sense was that Z was probably in the right in this matter, and that B was not lodging the complaint out of spite, but out of some genuine frustration about how to meet Z's standards. Complication: Y, who had originally called me, was a very senior colleague, and Z was very junior.

In both situations, what I did was this: I interviewed all parties, gathered information on their perspectives and then asked them to agree that final work would be submitted to me for my evaluation and submission of a final grade. Both students received grades sufficiently good to, in one case, graduate the student; and in the other case, move that student into hir major of choice. While both pieces of work were inferior, I did not believe that a disputed grade was a good reason to bar the student from progressing on to the next stage. In neither case, therefore, did I fully validate the faculty member's position, although I worked very hard to be supportive and sympathetic to each.

In the case of A, no actual grade had to be assigned, since the senior work was pass/fail: thus, while the work itself was admittedly quite odd, and bore the marks of not having been critiqued and supervised by a mentor, the student had clearly made a good faith effort to complete it, it was quite long, and represented what would normally be considered to be minimally acceptable in terms of meeting the graduation requirement.

In the case of B, I asked hir for previously submitted written work; I asked Z for the course syllabus and for the roster of other grades given in the course. I also asked that Z write several paragraphs that covered B's ungraded work for the class -- participation, absences, visits to office hours. B and I talked about this document, and with a few minor emendations, we were able to agree that it fairly represented hir efforts in the course, which had been slight in these areas. I also talked to B about the course readings enough to get a sense that sie had not done much of the reading for the course, which probably contributed to hir confusion about what sie was ultimately being asked to do -- or could do -- in the term paper. And when I saw the term paper, I understood that the paper sie had written was autobiographical, and not the critical essay engaging class readings that sie had been asked to write. When talking to B, I also learned that sie had submitted similar personal essays to Professor Y in another course, and received high marks for them. Therefore, although it was not Z's fault, B was correct in thinking that sie was being held to a standards different from those sie had previously experienced: Professor Y's concern for B's well-being during a difficult life transition had caused Y to allow B to not meet the course requirements and submit more personal writing instead. It was unclear to me whether Professor Y had explained to B that sie had been exempted from the standard Y had used to evaluate the rest of the class.

Neither of these incidents exactly mirrors the problems my correspondent's question raises, one of which is very disturbing: that the instructor being accused of discrimination has reason to believe that s/he is being discriminated against. It seems to me legitimate that a faculty member ask a student to modify offensive behavior and be supported by the Chair; and I would question what the student who did not wish to talk about gay people was doing in a class about sexuality. The latter student does not seem to be there for legitimate learning purposes, and Professor Contingent was right to ask him to participate honestly in the course.

That said, what does the faculty member have a right to expect from the Chair in relation to these incidents? Certainly that her side of the story will be listened to, taken into account and perhaps even given sympathy. But if the Chair is doing the job right, s/he will solve this problem in a way that is least likely to have reverberating effects for the faculty member and for the Department, even if it means tempering support of the faculty member by recognizing that the student has a legitimate point of view. This is even more likely as an outcome if Professor Contingent's contract is due to expire shortly: having an ongoing dispute with a student on behalf of a faculty member who you will never see again is a lot of wasted labor and unwanted attention for no gain. The Chair will also recognize that most disputes represent conflicting points of view in a "he-said-she said" situation that are not likely to be resolved by more talk, either because one party has an interest in covering up the truth, or because the situation was genuinely perceived differently by two individuals committed to differing points of view. In either case, the faculty member is unlikely to have her perspective completely validated, because to do that would invalidate the student's perspective and prolong the dispute to no good purpose. And prolonging the dispute -- or opening up the curriculum of the program to ideological scrutiny -- is not in the Chair's interest. So if I were the Chair, I would do what I did in both situations above: make all parties feel listened to and grade the work myself.

What can the faculty member do? Well, I would have a couple suggestions for the future.

1. Students are often drawn to controversial classes, and controversial teachers, for reasons they themselves do not understand, and their form of resistance to ideas that upset their worlds can be refusing to learn and getting into conflicts with the teacher to get attention. Furthermore, in some public systems, students can have difficulty getting into the classes they need to fulfill graduation requirements, and might end up in a queer, critical race or feminist literature course because it fit their schedule or there was a seat open. I could not recommend more strongly that controversial courses be offered with a credit/fail option, partly because students with ambivalent feelings about the material do not have to be graded on prior knowledge or affinity for the material at hand, and partly because it encourages students to take risks and not become hostile and defensive when they aren't understanding the material or don't wish to fully engage.

2. For many years after a particularly unpleasant incident in one of my classes (which included unfounded charges of sexual harassment and racism) I had a code of civility on my syllabus: students were asked, in the first class, to discuss the code while I was out of the room, amend it if they wished, and then we would all agree to it. At the time, I was also having particular trouble with students being disrepectful to each other, which inevitably produced conflict with me as well. This "contract" worked like a charm -- less because I could use the code to discipline students, but because we talked about how we would treat each other and students felt that they were full partners to the agreement.

3. For any faculty member, at any level of experience, I would also say: if you find that you are persistently getting into conflict with students, without necessarily ascribing blame, you need to ask yourself why and how to address conflict, or avoid it, without intervention from outsiders. Most frequently, asking a student for a private meeting to discuss what is happening, perhaps even with another colleague present, is a better way to address bad behavior than to confront a student in front of the class (which may have escalated Professor Contingent's problem with the student in the sexuality course) And giving a student a C- without any oppoprtunity to do extra credit work, or re-do failing work, is also bound to cause a conflict with a student to escalate, particularly when the student has framed the problem as an ideological dispute from the get-go. It's unfair but true: sometimes it is worth finding a reason to give the student a reasonable grade just to get them out of your life. And it is simply the case that some students -- like those people who are constantly suing others for real and imagined insults - go around fishing for trouble, and you need to be alert to them when they show up. Don't get stuck fighting out a crazy situation because you "know" you are right. Right you may be, but it sometimes isn't worth your peace of mind to fight it out to the end.