Six ‘Easy’ Pieces? Richard Feynman and the Undergraduate Lectures

Posted: September 30, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Education | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Richard P. Feynman was a Nobel prize winning theoretical physicist, who made great contributions to physics and the popularity of physics through his books and lectures. Among many other useful activities he developed Feynman diagrams, which provided a useful pictorial abstraction of the rather complicated mathematical expressions that govern the behaviour of subatomic particles.

Trust me when I tell you that this is easier to understand than the expressions.

This is a great tool in many ways because it makes the difficult more easy to understand, the abstract able to be represented in a (closer to) concrete manner and, above all, humans like pictures. Feynman was very interested in teaching as well because he felt that students could offer inspiration and because teaching could be a diversion when the well of theoretical physics creativity was running dry.  He was an opponent of rote learning and any approach to teaching that put the form before the function. He loved to explain and felt a strong duty to explain things clearly and correctly, with an emphasis on a key principle that if he couldn’t explain it at the freshman level, then it wasn’t yet understood fully.

In the 60’s Feynman was asked, by Caltech, to reinvigorate the teaching of undergraduates and, three years later, he produced the Feynman Lectures on Physics. I’ve read these before (I used to study Physics – I know, I seem so nice!) and so have many other people – it’s estimated that more than 3 million copies have been sold in various languages. I picked up a copy of the ‘cut-down’ version of the lectures “Six Easy Pieces”, recently re-published in Penguin (AU$ 9.95! Hooray for cheap books!)

Reading the 1989 Special Preface to the original lectures, re-printed in “Six Easy Pieces”, a strange fact emerges, which is that Feynman’s lectures did not necessarily succeed for their target audience, the undergraduates, but instead served to inspire the teachers. As Goodstein and Neugebauer noted, while the class started with 180 undergraduate students, many of the students dreaded the class and, over time, dropped out. While the class remained full, it was because of the increased occupation by faculty and graduate students.

In the original preface, by Feynman, he appears to have noticed that something was amiss because he reflects on the fact that he didn’t think it was a great success. One problem was that there was no feedback from the students to him to tell him how he was doing, whether they were keeping up. (Feynman provided very little outline and all of the homework assignments were created by other professors sitting in the class, furiously noting what had been covered and then creating the other work for recitation.) Feynman’s aim was to challenge and interest the best and brightest, he sought to not only direct the lecture at the smartest in the room  but to present work so that even the most brilliant in the room would be unable to cover it all. Feynman’s preface contains terms such as ‘sufficiently clever’, which may seem fine to some but to me indicate clearly that he, an astoundingly smart and still empathic human being, had at least an inkling that something had gone wrong between his vision and what happened in the classroom.

At the end of the preface, Feynman reflects, in a rather melancholy tone, “I don’t think I did very well by the students”. He is concerned that, based on the way that the the students handled the questions in the examination, that the system is a failure. A colleague points out that maybe 12-24 students appeared to really get it but you don’t have to be a very good mathematician to release that 24/180 (a nudge over 13%) is not the best rate of transfer. As Feynman gloomily responds (quoting Gibbon):

“The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous”

Feynman finishes, with his characteristic insight, that the direct individual relationship between student and teacher is paramount, where the student discusses things and works with, and discusses, ideas. That it is impossible to learn very much by sitting in a lecture. But he sees himself torn between what he sees as the right way to proceed and the number of students that we have to teach.

And, 49 years later, we, the inheritors of Sisyphus, are still trying to push that same rock up the same educational hill. Richard Feynman, a grand communicator and superlative thinker and scientist, tried his hardest to make the lecture work and even he couldn’t do it. He had mountains of support and he was unhappy with the result. He is clearly articulating all of the ideas for which we now have so much evidence and, yet, here we still are with 1000-person lectures and students who might be able to plug some numbers into formulas but don’t necessarily know what it means to think inside our discipline or discuss ideas in a meaningful dialogue.

From a personal perspective, Feynman’s Lectures on Physics are one the reasons why I gave up physics. I was struggling to see how it all fitted together and I went to seek help. (I was also a terrible student in those days but this was one of the rare occasions when I tried to improve.) One of my lecturers told me that I should read Feynman’s lectures and because it was designed for undergrads, if I couldn’t get that, I wouldn’t be able to catch up – basically, I didn’t have the Physics brain. I read it. I didn’t get it. I sorted the world into “physicists” and “non-physicists”, with me in the second group. (This is probably not a bad outcome for the physics community and, years later, while I can now happily read Feynman, it certainly doesn’t excite me as much as what I’m doing now.) I imagine that Feynman himself, while not lamenting me leaving the field, would probably be at least mildly perturbed at such a weaponisation of his work. From reading about him, his books and prefaces, I believe that he expected a lot of his students but he never actually wanted to be unpleasant about it. His own prefaces record his unease with the course he produced. He has no doubts about the physics and the aim – but his implementation was not what he wanted and not what he believed to be the best approach.

So, when someone questions your educational research supported ideas for improving learning and teaching, grab a copy of “Six Easy Pieces” and get them to read all of the preface material. Feynman himself regarded a lot of areas in educational research as cargo cult science, which applies as well to any poorly constructed scientific experimentation, but it is quite obvious that on at least some of the most important issues regarding knowledge transfer, he had a deep understanding and commitment to improvement, because of his direct experience with undergraduates and his ability to openly criticise himself in order to improve.

Follow-up on the post “Enhancing Australian IT Research”

Posted: September 28, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Education | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

[Edit: Gernot has put a further discussion of the points raised both in the previous post and this one, which you can find here. In this one, Gernot clearly explains why approaches were taken the way they were, how NICTA is benefiting from the ongoing work (as are we) and further identifies that the original article didn’t manage to capture a lot of the detail of what had happened. My thanks again to Professor Heiser for taking the time to respond to this so thoroughly and so patiently!]

I’ve put this back up on the top so that you can read Professor Gernot Heiser’s response to the points I raised in my blog post “Enhancing the Reputation of Australian IT Research – by giving it away?” Gernot’s main point is that I don’t understand the spin-off and VC process, which has thus led to the misinterpretation of the Australian IT article (which he also finds fault with). He has taken the time to write a blog post on it that you can read over here. I have also edited the original post to include a reference to this, which I’ve put there for people reading it from scratch, as I am very serious about the final statement on the piece, namely that:

If Professor Heiser is reading this, then I welcome any clarification that he can make and, in the Australian have miscast this, then I welcome and will publish any supported correction. I sincerely hope that this is merely a miscommunication because the alternative is really rather embarrassing for all concerned.

I also posted a comment on Gernot’s blog that he hasn’t yet had time to moderate (I posted it late last night so I’m expecting that he’s asleep!), so I post it below, because the Internet is immediacy. (You’ll note that I used ‘posted’ instead of ‘written’ for the Australian – I’m becoming contaminated!)

“Hi Gernot,

I welcome the correction, as I noted in the original article. However, what was posted in the Australian left, to my reading, some serious questions open and, while you have addressed most of these here, they weren’t addressed in the original article. I, as I referred to it in my blog post, was reading the Australian and questioning the content because, in my opinion it cast this whole situation in a strange light.

I do find it interesting that you find my blog less accurate than the article as I had believed that I had addressed the article specifically and raised questions where I asked you, if you were reading it, to clarify issues. I never claimed to be the final interpreter on this – the note I finished on was (and I quote):

“If Professor Heiser is reading this, then I welcome any clarification that he can make and, in the Australian have miscast this, then I welcome and will publish any supported correction. I sincerely hope that this is merely a miscommunication because the alternative is really rather embarrassing for all concerned.”

I can assure that my search for clarification and expansion of, what now appears to be, a misleading piece of reportage was genuine. As you have placed a comment on the blog, which I have now approved, people can read both and now see a true dialogue – the power of the Internet.

One point that you don’t seem to have addressed, which I expect will occur in post 2, is how this specifically enhanced the reputation of Australian IT research. You mention that “NICTA isn’t a software business, it’s a national research lab, which produces world-class research and then gets the results out into the real world for the benefit of the nation.” – we’re obviously on the same page here – so are you arguing benefit in terms of to the VCs (as selling the product to an overseas owner is not, to my perspective, of immediate benefit to Australia except as a one-off payment, which is not being returned as originally discussed) or in terms of local jobs retained, despite the foreign ownership? (Although this was not reported in the original article – the intention is to retain the staff of the start-up as a remote division.)

Had I read the original NICTA release, dry and short though it is, I would have had very few questions. What piqued my curiosity was the way that the situation was reported in the paper and, as I believe we both agree, this did raise a number of questions, the vast majority of which you have addressed above.

There are, however, two things that I would like to note. You state that I misinterpret the role of start-ups, when I don’t believe that I refer to them in any way. There may be a subtlety that I’m missing so, again, clarification is welcome. You also say that claims that NICTA sold the labs are wrong, however, from the original article:

“NICTA last week announced it had sold one of its spin-off companies, Open Kernel Labs, that had developed virtualisation security software used on 1.6 billion mobile devices worldwide to the US giant.” (This was the Australian. A similar story was run on ZDNet and elsewhere. On digging, the GD and NICTA pages themselves refer to ‘acquisition’, without stating a seller.)

Given that most of us are not privy to the internal workings of NICTA, you can see how such an interpretation would have arisen, as there are (as you have identified) so many models to choose from. Yes, the investors may have decided it but we on the outside can only go on what we are told and the Australian and ZD reports are pretty decisive – although wrong as it turns out.

Thank you again, very genuinely, for the clarification. I look forward to section 2!

Regards,
Nick.”

On reading Gernot’s comments, I can completely understand the model that was taken but I am looking forward to Part 2, because while I can see why the different models exist, I’m still looking for that decisive statement of national benefit that was lacking from the paper. One of the final statements in Gernot’s response is:
“This is simply the standard VC investment model. If you don’t like it, don’t ask for venture capital!”

And I will address this. I always understood why the VC investors got their money, and why the bankers got theirs. I even understood why NICTA would trade away IP in attractive deals in order to attract funding. What, and I realise that this may be me just being slow, I am asking is how a project that has taken at least a chunk of federal funding, which has then parlayed that into a bigger company, is giving a national benefit return on that initial investment, given that it was the catalyst for the later financial structures.

I reiterate that I welcome the clarification as I feel that we have all benefitted from the extra information but I’m not sure that I introduced anything new into that Australian IT story than a dissection and contemplation, again, because it was so damn odd. I am really looking forward to Part 2, which I hope will further discuss the realities of running organisations like NICTA in the 21st Century.

Our Obligations: Moral and Legal?

Posted: September 28, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Education | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Mark Guzdial raises an interesting point over at a BLOG@CACM article, namely that, if we don’t keep up to to date with contemporary practice in learning and teaching, can be considered unprofessional or even negligent or unethical? If we were surgeons who had not bothered to stay up to date then our patients, and certifying bodies, would be rightly upset. If we are teachers – then what?

The other issue Mark discusses is that of the legal requirement. The US has Title IX, which should extend the same participation rights to all genders for any education program or activity that attracts federal funding. If we do not construct activities that are inclusive (or we design activities that, by their nature, are exclusive) would we be liable under US law?

Mark’s final question is: If we know a better way to teach computing, are we professionally (and even legally) required to use it?

That is a spectacularly good question and, of course, it has no easy answer. Let me extend the idea of the surgeon by building on the doctors’ credo: primum non nocere (first, do no harm). Ultimately, it requires us to consider that all of our actions have outcomes and, in the case of medical intervention, we should be sure that we must always consider the harm that will be caused by this intervention.

Let us consider that there are two approaches that we could take in our pursuit of knowledge of learning and teaching: that of true scholarship of learning and teaching, and that of ignorance of new techniques of learning and teaching. (We’ll leave enthusiasm and ability to the side for the time being.) While this is falsely dichotomous, we can fix this by defining scholarship as starting at ‘knowing that other techniques exist and change might not kill you’, with everything else below that as ‘ignorance of new techniques’.

Now let us consider the impact of both of these bases, in terms of enthusiasm. If someone has any energy at all, then they will be able to apply techniques in the classroom. If they are more energetic then they will apply with more vigour and any effect will be amplified. If these are useful and evidentially supported techniques, then we would expect benefit. If these are folk pedagogies or traditions that have long been discredited then any vigour will be applied to an innately useless or destructive technique. In the case of an inert teacher, neither matters. It is obvious then that the minimum harm is to employ techniques that will reward vigour with sound outcomes: so we must either use validated techniques or explore new techniques that will work.

Now let us look at ability. If a teacher is ‘gifted’ (or profoundly experienced)  then he or she will be more likely to carry the class, pretty much regardless. However, what if a teacher is not so much of a star? Then, in this case, we start to become dependent once again upon the strength of the underlying technique or pedagogy. Otherwise, we risk harming our students by applying bad technique because of insufficient ability to correct it. Again, do no harm requires us to provide techniques that will survive the average or worse-than-average teacher, which requires a consideration of load, development level, reliance upon authority and so on – for student and teacher.

I believe that this argues that, yes, we are professionally bound to confirm our techniques and approaches and, if a better approach is available, evaluate it and adopt it. To do anything else risks doing harm and we cannot do this and remain professional. We are intervening with our students all the time – if we didn’t feel that our approach had worth or would change lives then we wouldn’t be doing it. If intervention and guidance are at our core then we must adopt something like the first, do no harm maxim because it gives us a clear signpost on decisions that could affect a student for life.

One of the greatest problems we face is potentially those people who are highly enthused and deeply undereducated in key areas of modern developments of teaching. As Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord would have said:

One must beware of anyone who is [undereducated] and [very enthusiastic] — [s/he] must not be entrusted with any responsibility because [s/he] will always cause only mischief.

If your best volunteer is also your worst nightmare, how do you resolve this when doing so requires you to say “This is right but you are wrong.” Can you do so without causing enormous problems that may swamp the benefit of doing so?

What about the legal issues? Do we risk heading into the murky world of compliance if we add a legal layer – will an ethical argument be enough?

What do you think about it?

Let Me Eat Some Humble Pie First.

Posted: September 27, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Education | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

I’m, once again, sitting in an airport lounge and about to fly to Melbourne to discuss a challenging transition project. I have a very strange job in some ways. If you ask me what I am doing today it can vary from ‘teaching’ to ‘research’ (which says everything and nothing) or ‘flying to a meeting to look at something interesting’, because higher education is a damn funny beast in many ways.

Two days ago, however, what I was doing was “making an ass of myself”. Fortunately, the impact of this was that I ended up looking over-reactive and foolish, rather than any real damage, but this is something that I want to share with all of you because I am constantly aware of the aura of competence that we ascribe to the people in our societies who can communicate well. I regularly state (and it’s on my about page) that I expose my thinking processes in order to educate but there is something more than this, in that dissecting my own activities and reactions allows me to learn from myself.

I have read a great deal of literature on trying to bring change to areas that are steeped in tradition and burdened by history and, if you ask me, I can tell you that trying to force people to change won’t work. The best way to enact change is to provide an environment in which change can occur, providing pathways and good examples and by not wasting your time and effort bashing away at the unchanging stone faces of the looming statuary. The problem is, when you believe that you’re doing the right thing, that you get caught up in your own rhetoric. Worse, if you’ve been fighting these battles for years, you build up two highly destructive emotions: frustration, which then can lead to anger.

Two days ago, I let accumulated frustration out and I snapped at someone when, to be honest, I should have basically ignored it or, more positively, interpreted it generously and then guided the discussion towards the more generous interpretation. Instead of doing this, where I could have been positive, I took a negative stance and, boy, did I look like a schmuck when the dust settled.

And rightly so! I was a schmuck! The important thing now is for me to remember that my role is not to assume some level of authoritarian control over everything – I am not the evidence or the work of experts, I am a conduit that can help other people become more educated about these things. I tried to take control of something that not only could I not control but that it was not my job to control. Let’s call this a failure of humility – a hubris issue – and I shall make a delightful pie from it.

That’s “Pahh” for some of you.

The night of the aftermath and yesterday were very, very difficult for me because I had to review where I had gone wrong, how I could have handled it and what it meant for me in terms of ongoing relationships with people. I spent a lot of time in e-mail looking at constructive ways forward, with a lot of discussion and thought, and I believe that all the good avenues of dialog are open and, once again I’m still a schmuck, but no long term damage is done.

In the end, however, I have to apply the same spirit to myself that I apply to my students. I have to determine why I acted as I did (and, ultimately, it was over-protectiveness combined with fatigue). I have to work out how I could have done it better. I have to explain, in detail, to myself how I can change it and put steps in place to make sure that I change it. Then I move forward, with a new perspective and (I hope) a better way of dealing with things.

I am concerned with some of the information that has surfaced during this issue, as I am now worried that I am seriously out of step with some of my colleagues – a lot of what I’m trying to do revolves around how much mental adjustment someone can make and it is now obvious that there are far fewer usable foundations in some areas than I had hoped. This does not mean that I should become strident, shrill and militant because it won’t work. It does mean that I have some rethinking to do, a time to regroup and consider how I can go forward with the same message (educational research is useful, scientific and essential for our future) in a way that works for an even wider range of people.

Yes, if I had a time machine, I’d probably try and go back to not initiate the problems of two days ago. I prefer not to look like a raving idiot. But it’s not the end of the world and, as long as I’m learning from it, it’s a valuable reminder of how much more I have to learn, how much thinking is required to make good change happen and the fact that sometimes we all make mistakes.

Enhancing the Reputation of Australian IT Research – by giving it away?

Posted: September 26, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Education | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

(Update: Gernot has responded to this blog and has found fault with both it and the original article. I have responded to him. You can read his article here and my comment below that, or just look at the comments on this post. Thanks again, Gernot, for the clarifications.)

(Update 2: Gernot has put a further discussion of the points raised both in the previous post and this one, which you can find here. In this one, Gernot clearly explains why approaches were taken the way they were, how NICTA is benefiting from the ongoing work (as are we) and further identifies that the original article didn’t manage to capture a lot of the detail of what had happened. My thanks again to Professor Heiser for taking the time to respond to this so thoroughly and so patiently!

As I noted on his blog post, the article took a tone that I responded to and, with additional information, I can clearly see both the benefit as expressed and the reasons behind such a decision. I have left this and the follow-up posts intact, with these updates, to show the evolution of the discussion. Please make sure that you read both Parts 1 and 2 of Gernot’s response if you’re going to read this!)

I stumbled across this article in the Australian (Australia’s national newspaper) inside their AustralianIT section. In it, it was announced that the Australian research body National ICT Australia had sold “groundbreaking technologies” to a US company, for virtualisation security software that was used on 1.6 billion mobile devices worldwide. The spun-off company that was sold, Open Kernel (OK) Labs, was sold in its entirety and with no provision of royalties back to NICTA. Now, before we go any further, let’s talk about NICTA. NICTA is Australia’s Information and Communication Technology Research Centre of Excellence, employing about 700 people and funded by the Australian government. One of NICTA’s primary goals is to apply the high-impact research it develops to create national benefit and wealth for Australia. Remember this, it’s important.

Now let’s go back to the sale of OK Labs and, if you read the article carefully, you’ll see that there is some serious non-discussion of how much money changed hands and whether the Australian government, or NICTA, would receive any payment back at all from the sale. The former CTO and co-founder, Professor Gernot Heiser, has stated that while he couldn’t reveal the cost of the technology, it was about 25 person years of development. He then goes on to point out that the original micro-kernel was open source and hence no royalties accrued, but they had received some payments for it. (In the past, I think?) The second kernel was developed after the original OK Labs had been spun off, with NICTA retaining a minority share, but that NICTA didn’t have any share or role in its development, hence that had transferred wholesale to the new US owner and, again, no royalties. The third micro-kernel was a research outcome from NICTA but hadn’t been deployed commercially – but this was moot as OK Labs had received an exclusive licence to use it, then purchased it outright and NICTA had obtained some equity without cash in OK Labs as a result.

Got that? Now let’s get to the profit sharing. Firstly, there has been no indication whether NICTA would receive any payment back from the sale to balance against the initial investment of taxpayer funds.

Hmm.

Any profit from the deal went to OK Labs investors initially and “anything left” is distributed to shareholders, which included NICTA. (Remember that they traded valuable and NICTA developed research for a greater stake of the pie, which will be valuable if “anything is left”.)

Hmmm.

Let me add the final paragraph of the article here, because I can’t do it any better justice:

Professor Heiser said professional bankers were engaged to make the sale “and they didn’t do it for free”. He said the sale of OK Labs enhanced the reputation of Australian IT research.

Financially, this is pretty much what has happened.

I can only hope that this is the worst-written, hatchet-job of an article because, otherwise, I’m flabbergasted. It appears that a government funded body has managed to develop and deploy a technology while systematically ensuring that any actual benefit from IP developed on these monies was distributed to everyone else before a single dollar flowed back in to turn over the research cycle once more. The investors are making money, NICTA traded some valuable IP for magic beans and may not get any money, the bankers are making money and, somehow, in the scope of this operatically complex financial dance, where the private benefit is enormous, Professor Heiser then turns around and sticks a public benefit statement on the end. We’ve enhanced the reputation of Australian IT research.

How does this … situation enhance anyone’s opinion of our research? Who is going to know in a year’s time where that research came from and why will they ever have to know?

The standard shining light in Australian IT from public funding is the CSIRO WiFi patent which is scheduled to attract royalty payments of roughly $1 billion over the next 5-10 years. This is the model that everyone explains to you when you first get into University research and, if you have anything commercialisable, expect a knock on the door from your local research innovation group because everyone wants another CSIRO patent. A billion dollars buys a lot of research.

I don’t know how you can possible slice up 25 person years of time and trade that for a peppercorn in potentia, with federal funding and the dominant position of NICTA on the Australian academic research scene, and possibly call this enhancing the reputation of Australian IT Research. Why, yes, I’m sure investors will want to come back, get us to pay for it, trade it away, sell it to them with no hope of recouping our investment and then not require royalties. I have no doubt that this may bring more investors but in the same way that a wounded fish attracts sharks. The enhanced reputation of the fish is a fleeting experience and is hardly enjoyable.

If Professor Heiser is reading this, then I welcome any clarification that he can make and, in the Australian have miscast this, then I welcome and will publish any supported correction. I sincerely hope that this is merely a miscommunication because the alternative is really rather embarrassing for all concerned.

The Complex Roles Of Universities In The Period Of Globalization – Altbach – Part 3

Posted: September 25, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Education | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

To finish this triptych, I’d like to look at Altbach’s assessment of contemporary issues. Private education providers are one of the most obvious recent developments and, with the erosion of the public good motivator, this is no real surprise. It’s less of a surprise when you affix the word “Profit-making” in front of the words ‘education provider’. Given that there is growing demand for education and also given that we are blurring the lines between the institutions, it becomes easy to see why a new market has exploded for people who wish to provide education, or something like it, at a reasonable fee with a possibility of making lots and lots of money. This, however, has an impact on the public sector because it reduces the students who may have come to us for a variety of reasons, especially when the private institutions are targeting the more wealthy in some way. Suddenly, we find ourselves having to justify which kinds of knowledge we are teaching in the public sector because the type of knowledge, and the jobs it leads to, become an issue when you are competing for students inside certain professional areas. Faculties of Arts across the world are very much feeling themselves caught in this pinch. It is hard to imagine many older Universities making such a bald statement such as “There is no need for History or English Scholars”, yet by pumping resources into their professional and technical streams they are saying it through their resource distribution. If something does not provide income or attract the right market, a jaded eye is cast across it and, depending on the wealth and capacity of the institution, this leads to the shutting down of schools or entire faculties.

Why is this such a problem? Because restarting a discipline is much harder once the number of participants drops down too far. Reduce the number of people in a discipline and their shared publications and venues also shrink. Given that publication is vital to perceived success in many ways, this shrinkage will make it harder to publish OR lead to accusations of irrelevance as the overall citation level drops because there are so few people in the area. We are so heavily measured and assessed, as individuals and as universities, that we are beleaguered by league tables and beset by set publication standards. Our management structures, modes of accountability, the way that we have worked and thought for centuries are not a good fit for this new modality. This is not the golden age ramblings that I have previously pointed to as dreaming of better days – in this case, it’s true. Our systems don’t work with the new expectations.

Opening ourselves up to students from anywhere is a noble goal, and one I support wholeheartedly, but it brings great challenge. Can we pursue anything that interests us, relevant or not, and expect to meet the demands of the new century? If we can, I don’t think we can do it with the systems that we have and certainly not while we’re being measured on externally applied metrics of success. Even deciding on whether a student should be admitted or not is now a matter of school ranking, bonus points, place availability, status and, in murkier waters, the two speed entry system of public and privately-funded places in the same institution, where admitting one party may (in the worst case) prevent another from entering. As Altbach notes, our ideas of governance are changing as our scale grows and our complexity increases. Senior Professors used to set our course but now we either need or have taken on trained administrators who do not think as we do, have not had our training and, in many ways, treat us as a standard business with a strange product. We are more accountable than ever, while we wander around being randomly measured and trying to work out what it is that we need to do in order to be measured accurately and then try and perform our tasks of learning, teaching and research. How do we reconcile the community of scholars with the bureaucracies that run our institutions?

Altbach then moves on to discuss developing countries and the special challenges that they face. Many of these countries have broken links to their indigenous cultures, due to colonisation, occupation, war and civil unrest, and, when combined with the colonial trend to keep investment in higher education low, this means that many of these countries are systematically disadvantaged. Their systems are so small that expansion is hard – insufficient training grounds for new educators, delay in building and resource appropriation and the threat of instability combine to make it very hard to kickstart anything. Poverty and lack of local government resources move some of these attempts across to the ‘impossible’ category. As it becomes hard to limit enrolments, overcrowding is the norm and, while you can’t limit enrolment, you can use draconian measures to ensure that anyone who falls behind is ejected, in the hope that freeing up that slot might ease some of the crush on the resources. This is a very unforgiving approach to education: you have one chance, you blew it, goodbye. Given that this is one of the only paths out of poverty in many of these countries, and that it is very easy to fall behind in a poor and resource-starved system, this is a nasty little feedback loop. Where other institutions are built up in response to demand, these newer academies tend not to offer the same level of education and we once again have the problem of a piece of paper that is not as worthy as another: we are providing education in name only and creating yet another two-speed system. Where the job market and the educational bodies don’t keep up with each other you may have that most awful ghetto: the educated unemployed, who have invested time and money into a degree that grants them no advantage at all.

Where we are over-stretched, we tend to only do those things that generate the most benefit and this is also true in the case of these third world Universities. Teaching earns money so teaching dominates. Research is sidelined, international collaboration is sidelined and staff have no time to do anything except teach because they are trying to keep their salary coming. Unsurprisingly, this is not a stage set of excellence and advancement – these universities are falling further and further behind.

Altbach concludes by talking about the pressure that we are all under and that have made the majority of our institutions reactive, limiting our creativity to solving pressing problems in a response to external pressures. Right now, we are running so fast that we do not have time to question why we are even on this treadmill, let alone take any real steps to make serious change that is truly strategic rather than reactive. We have lost our autonomy to a degree, as well as our identity. We are enmeshed in society but in a role that favours the market forces and makes us dance in response to it. Altbach ponders what our role should be and proposes a move towards the broader public interest, moving away from market forces and towards academic autonomy.This is not the selfish “leave me alone” cry of a spoiled child, this is a recognition of the fact that we have many more things to offer than a diploma and a vocation: universities are societies of thinkers and are far more complex and diverse than our current strictures would make us appear. All universities are important, says Altbach, and it is at society’s peril that it ignores the many roles that a University can provide. Looking at us as profit-making, degree factories, or as an elite streaming system, ignores the grand public benefit of an educated society, the value of the public intellectual and the scholarly community. We deserve support, says Altbach, because serve the goals of society and the individual. Let us do our jobs properly.

I found it to be a very interesting article to read and I hope I’ve capture the essence reasonably well. I look forward to discussing it! Thanks again, RV!

The Complex Roles Of Universities In The Period Of Globalization – Altbach – Part 2

Posted: September 24, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Education | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Continuing from my previous post, Altbach deals with the University as a focus of the international community. We host other people, share interests, cross-populate each other with PhD students and professors – sometimes it’s a wonder that we don’t get spontaneous germination of new Universities just from all of the swapping! Because of our mission, we tend to have a much greater ability to look, think and act on the international level. This is an interesting contrast to the role of the Uni as a national stabiliser, as the more one travels and looks outward, the more one realises that your country is just one of many. I travel a fair bit for work and I can tell you that, right now, I haven’t run across a single issue that is not being felt by at least two (or more) Universities at an equal level of pain, yet most people who don’t travel or share their world view feel isolated and that “no one else would understand.” The realisation that all countries are really very similar (yes, with one or two exceptions) and that Unis are the same all over the world sets the academic even further away from the people outside and again increases the obligation to communicate with people outside of academia. Hoarding knowledge or sneering at the uninformed do not come with the territory – Universities have traditionally been the centres of connectivity, even before the internet, and now that most Unis end up being the default Internet distribution point in many regions, this is becoming even more important.

This ties in with the next topic that Altbach mentions, our role in social mobility. Education transforms people. While you have to the son of the King to (most likely) become King, anyone can become an engineer (with a few caveats, to keep my colleagues in Eng happy!) with access to education. Expanding Universities from a small and elite focussed approach to a larger scale, massified, model has brought access and equity to a much larger group of people. This is not a given, of course, as the first-in-family do face a lot of challenges but, where the right attention is given to support and scholarships, great things can be achieved.

We are also engines for economic development, in that our knowledge can be commercialised, spun-off, licensed and re-used, through adjacent Science and Technology Parks or through relationships with industry. There are entire twins in the US that would shrivel up overnight without their co-located University. Academic research is still a key driver in innovation both directly and indirectly, through the production of research staff who then go to corporate research facilities.

But a number of these are fairly recent developments. International focus requires knowing about the world and having a method of travel, as well as not being at war with the place you’re trying to visit! The change from small and elite to large and massive requires vast amounts of money and resources and the changes have taken place with staggered effects across most of the second half of the 20th Century, into this new century. It’s not just the number of students, Altbach emphasises, it’s the range of post-secondary options that have sprung up to meet technical and industrial demand. These new institutions have new charters, new focus areas, different lengths and types of degree and we suddenly find that, much as oranges are not the only fruit, training at a University that can grant PhDs may not be the best preparation for working at an institution that is post-secondary yet nothing much like the places that its teachers have come from. The ‘pinnacle’ research institutions, prestigious and few in number, serve a smaller group and are probably the most complex institutions in the spectrum, training the most professionals and receiving the lion’s share of research funding. This introduces tension, between the doctoral graduates of the pinnacle who may transfer to other institutions and find themselves at odds with a very different mission, and because any system where an entrenched elite receive advantages that allow them to stay elite is always going to cause tension. Massification has led to greater disparity. Yes, almost anyone can go to college, but it appears that achieving that has meant that we have now risked devaluing the term ‘college’ along the way. In Australia, students say they’re going to ‘Uni’ when that could mean TAFE (Technical and Further Education), adult education, or actual University. (We had a comprehensive shake-up some time ago that turned all of the institutes of technology into Universities, or we would have that distinction as well. The previous separation of degrees and ‘applied’ degrees had actually worked quite well, at least in my reading and opinion, but government initiatives are what they are, and we will talk more about this in the discussion of public and private good.) Should it matter what one does when the word ‘college’ is mentioned? No, it shouldn’t. The problem is when the issue becomes confusing or we provide a service that we call ‘college’ to all of our citizens, yet some citizens get a better version than others for reasons that are not transferable or equitable. To quote Altbach:

Massification inevitably creates more variations and diversity in academic systems. It creates opportunities for access that are unprecedented in world history, but at the same time it creates systems that are less equal and more difficult to support financially.

This brings us squarely into Altbach’s next point, the issue of public versus private good, a debate that rages unabated today. Changes in Australian University funding have very much been under the presumption that the greatest good is being enjoyed by the private citizen who receives the education, rather than the society to which they contribute, hence the citizen should bear more of the load for their own education. (My response is ‘piffle’, the benefit to our society of the educated is hard to overestimate,  but I’ve already discussed this in an earlier post.) As noted in the article, whether the state can or cannot support public education is moot as many states are just shifting the burden to the citizen and their families. This inevitably creates a two-speed system, where some go to college and some do not, because of influences and decisions that may have had an impact on the grandparents and parents of the student, rather than any personal merit. Given that, even in a meritocratic system, training programs and preparation schools can make all the difference, and these are usually private and expensive, any meritocratic system risks quickly falling into the same two-speed divide. Even if a place is available at the correct type of institution, the costs of relocating, leaving a secure community and moving from a more socialised and low-cash environment to an isolated, pay-up-front and distant location to attend a college may place another bar in the way of the prospective student from a less advantaged area. Mass higher education is supposed to be for the masses but solving the issues of nomenclature, access and preparation do nothing if no-one can actually attend unless they’re rich. Many of our activities are linked, in one way or another, to the public good and we are well aware that feeling that you are an active and contributing member of your society is usually associated with greater motivation to participate and be involved with this good. Any restrictive mechanisms driven by forcing the burden back on to the citizen, defended by the notion of personal benefit dominates any public benefit, undermine the ability of people to join and contribute to greater society: this undermines the public good, as well as setting the stage for disenfranchisement and a disengagement from society. Every time we do this, we risk casting another generation out of the circle of those who will go to college.

I’ll finish this tomorrow, with a discussion of the contemporary issues, from the report, and my own thoughts overall.

The Complex Roles Of Universities In The Period Of Globalization – Altbach – Part 1

Posted: September 23, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Education | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

One of the most handy things about having a new member in a research group, especially one who is just finishing or has just finished submitting a PhD, is that they come in with an entirely new subset of the possible papers in the given discipline, which they have used to construct their theses and inform their thinking. While you will have the standard overlap of the key papers in the field, there will often be waterways that run away from the main river and it is in these diverse streams that we find new ways of thinking, even leading to these stream becoming tributaries that feed back into our main body, strengthening the overall work.

R has just sent me a reference from her thesis, a copy of Altbach’s 2011 publication in Higher Education in the World 3: New Challenges and Emerging Roles for Human and Social Development, entitled “The Complex Roles Of Universities In The Period Of Globalization”. The abstract is pithy but this quote stands out: “The academic drift of the 21st century raises concerns about the core functions of universities and how contemporary changes have affected academic missions.” This is a fascinating paper and one that I wish I turned up early because it has the same concerns as I do, and as Richard Hil did with his Whackademia book, in that we are all being asked to do more with less and it is how we do this that will decide our future, and the future of higher education. (Readers may recall that I did not agree with much of what Hil said – as I said, I wish I had read Altbach sooner because it would have made the rebuttal easier.) I’m going to cover this across a few posts because the paper has a fair bit of comment and I’d like to make some commentary!

Altbach looks at the different roles that Universities have had over time, including the different roles that they play in certain countries and how time, politics, religion, wealth and nationalism have all contributed to changing demands on the sector. There is no doubt that teaching and research make up our core functions but we can vary from country to country as to whether we are teaching technical skills, professional skills or general education at Universities. Over time, we have often been in conflict with our own societies, which can lead to great creativity but at the cost of additional load or difficult burdens. Research is equally difficult to pin down: are we talking ‘pure’ research or ‘applied’ research? Does research have to be discipline focused or can we perform research on teaching, or research on research? Does it matter where the research money comes from? Different areas inside the same university can have completely different answers to these questions so it’s little doubt that this question is still open!

Universities have been used to foster national development and identity, as Altbach mentions with German, Japanese and American examples, or as stabilising influences in the third world. We are also steadily evolving academic centres, adding courses as the ranks of the professions grow. My profession, Computer Scientist, wasn’t even a profession until the second half of the 20th century (that’s why we have so few cool awards – there is no Nobel prize in Applied Algorithmics). Immediately we see a conflict in the sense of stability and status quo required to be a national touchstone, while determining how we adapt to the changing demands of the workforce and the new professionals.

We have always been associated with knowledge as both the defenders and disseminators, ignoring secular and religious demand to not teach certain things or to state that red is black, with a focus on organisation to facilitate later retrieval. This access to knowledge also feeds in to one of our other key facets, or at least one of the most desirable, that of an intellectual centre. As academics, we have the freedom to express our ideas and, many would argue, the obligation to do so given that we have that freedom. The expertise that our staff have should be available to all in terms of interpretation and refinement of ideas and concepts but to do that we have to engage with the community. It is of little surprise that we often find ourselves involved in social and political movements, supporting other activists, providing resources and making an overall contribution to the intellectual life of our surroundings.

This is, for me, a very important point because it forces us to consider where the private individual ends and the public intellectual begins, if such a division even makes any sense. From a personal perspective, I would not raise my politics in a classroom but I would discuss issues of ethics and equality, some of which may or may not be in accord with prevailing government thought. Let me be more explicit. Yesterday, I attended a rally for Marriage Equality, as part of a reaction against the Australian Federal Government’s rejection of a bill to allow same sex marriage. I would most certainly not have advertised this event in my lectures or told my students about it because I think that there’s far too much capacity for me to influence my students to act through our relationship, which is not a discussion or political sharing but overt influence. I attended the rally as a private citizen but if my students asked me about it, because we did get photographed and videoed, then I feel that I could explain my actions within an ethical framework, which means that this is informing my role as public intellectual. My community, equality and ethical focus drives both the citizen and the academic and allows me to carry out two roles while attempting to minimise any exploitation of the power relationship that I have with my students. However, my capacity as a (notional) public intellectual requires me to have an explanation for what I did that is articulate and comprehensible. The private citizen is impassioned but the academic is both passionate and rationale, and can place the activity in a context that allows it to be shared.

But, as I always say, there is no point having a system that only works with perfect people. Altbach is talking about our institutions, which is the right focus for the paper, but the institutions are just buildings without the academics and students that fill them. I attempt to juggle my private and public self and, while sometimes I succeed more than others, I think I know what I should ‘look like’ to my institution, my peers, my students and my social groups. What will be interesting in the coming world of change for Universities is how we deal with the people who don’t work as well within the role of educator. I have no time, respect or tolerance for those of my colleagues who confuse intellectual freedom with a wanton disregard for reasonable behaviour in this privileged role. Just because we organise the knowledge doesn’t mean that we own it, nor does our mastery of intellectual pursuits (if we achieve that) make us any better than anyone else: we have merely had more opportunity but, for me, that comes with a corresponding level of responsibility. I have seen more than one academic, not at my own University I hasten to add, who has obviously been grooming a student through manipulation of the aura of competency that any decent academic can muster, where we appear wise, worldly and incredibly, staggeringly, deep on matters that are so very, very passionate and important. Altbach writes of what changes we have seen in Universities but you only have to read through the yellow press (or the FFFF00 press on the web) to see how many educators are abusing their relationship with their students and I’m not sure what this says about how the educators themselves are changing. I have heard dire tales of exploitative behaviour in the 70s and 80s in my country – “A for a lay” unpleasantness and similar. When we talk of our intellectual freedoms, our influence on the world as national stabilisers and centres of knowledge, it is important to remember that the components of these institutions are merely people. As we increase the stresses on the organisations, so too do we distribute this across people and, given that people are already failing some key moral and disciplinary requirements, any discussion of what our role should become will have to take into account the fact that we are building a system from people, to work with other people.

This Is Your Captain Speaking: Turn Off Your Gadgets

Posted: September 22, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Education | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,

This is your Captain speaking. Shortly,I’m going to push on a set of levers that will allow fuel to pour into the steel cylinders affixed to the side of the plane and, in the presence of well-engineered flame, create a series of small and controlled explosions that will allow us to lift roughly 400 tonnes of metal and flesh into the air and propel you towards your destination.

As part of this, when the plane heads down the runway, we will pass a threshold known as V1. Do you know what V1 means? V1 is the takeoff decision speed  and is the speed at which we will try and take off, even if one engine fails. Basically, V1 is the speed at which we are travelling so fast that we are safest in the air – we are beyond the realm of air brakes or the rather amusingly useless brakes on the wheels. You know that mechanical brakes can evaporate on trucks when they’re going too fast, right? Think an even faster “pfft, bloooo” for planes.

Having gone through V1, we will reach V2. That is the speed at which, having committed to take-off, we will attempt to rotate the nose up and we will safely be able to take off, even if one engine is down. You know this speed. We trundle down the runway and you might miss V1 but the moment we rotate the nose up, that’s V2.

If I can’t easily find out when either of these speeds are, we’re stuffed. I need the read-outs in front of me to give me a reliable idea of these speeds or my co-pilots and I will be working on guesswork and you, seriously, do not want that.

There are two points when you are seriously vulnerable in an aircraft: takeoff and landing. During both of these moments, our proximity to the ground and reduced speed combine to form a major liability: any misjudgement at this point can lead to catastrophe because we have not got any time to recover from disaster. This, of course, is why we ask you to turn off every single possible source of interference to out aircraft systems, which includes phones, iPods, iPads, MP3 players, Kindles, Kobo readers, whatever. We want to have the best chance possible to let the plane tell us everything that it can.

Some of you don’t turn the gadgets off and, as your Captain, let me berate both you and the people who educated you. You, because you ignored the legal requirement to comply with my instructions and your teachers, because they failed to adequately instruct you in the importance of cause and effect, personal responsibility, and anecdotal evidence.

If you, as a person, opt to leave your gear on despite being asked not to, you are saying to the roughly 500 other passengers that your need to read a book in an electronic form, or watch a movie, trumps their fundamental right to personal safety. Now, we’re not 100% sure that this will cause a problem but, as we’re also not sure that it won’t interfere with our systems and we do need to know lots of stuff about the aeroplane at these critical times, we ask you to switch this gear off. Will it cause an accident? Probably not. Is it safe? We don’t know. Right now, you’re not demonstrating an adequate knowledge of cause and effect or personal responsibility.

Oh, so your Uncle Willie left his mobile on and nothing happened? Great! Fantastic! Was it this type of plane? Same avionics? Was there unforeseen confusion in the flight deck that no-one mentioned (Probably not but you don’t know.) Hey,  I hear Uncle Willie drove through an intersection once against the red lights at 100 mph – why don’t you try that?  Anecdotal evidence, especially one exceptional case, proves nothing.

Actions have repercussions but this doesn’t mean that there will always be a 1:1 match-up between them. If mobile phones always crashed planes, we’d search you and confiscate them. It’s the possible and unlikely interaction of plane and gadget that we’re worried about and this is why we sincerely hope that your teachers have managed to get this idea through to you, along with the fact that rationalisation doesn’t equal reason and one contrary exemplar does not state a uniform case.

Let me remind you that we will shortly be flying in a 400 tonne piece of metal that hurtles through the sky at 650 mph on top of 2-4 engines of burning flame.

Do you actually want to make it harder for me to control this?

Think about the possible impact of your actions, comply with crew directions and, for a few minutes at the start and end of the flight, do what I ask you to do and turn off your gadgets. It might not do anything, but it might give you a chance to be irritated by a similar announcement on a subsequent flight.

Thank you for your attention.”

The Philosophical Angle

Posted: September 21, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Education | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Socrates drank hemlock after being found guilty of corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens, and impiety. Seneca submitted to the whims of Nero when the Emperor, inevitably, required that his old tutor die. Seneca’s stoicism was truly tested in this, given that he slashed his veins, took poison, jumped in a warm bath and finally had to be steamed to death before Nero’s edict that he kill himself was finally enacted. I, fortunately, expect no such demonstrations of stoic fortitude from my students but, if we are to think about their behaviour and development as self-regulating beings, then I think that a discussion of their personal philosophy becomes unavoidable. We have talked about the development state, their response to authority, their thoughts on their own thinking, but what of their philosophy?

If you are in a hurry and jump in your car, every red light between you and your destination risks becoming a personal affront, an enraging event that defies your expectation of an ‘all-green’ ride into town. There is no reason why you should expect such favours from the Universe, whatever your belief system, but the fact that this is infuriating to you remains. In the case of the unexpected traffic light, which sounds like the worst Sherlock Holmes story ever, the worst outcome is that you will be late, which may have a variety of repercussions. In preparing assignment work, however, a student may end up failing with far more dire and predictable results.

“Watson, I shall now relate the entire affair through Morse tapped pipe code and interpretative dance.”

While stoicism attracts criticism, understandably, because it doesn’t always consider the fundamentally human nature of humans, being prepared for the unforeseen is a vital part of any planning process. Self-regulation is not about drawing up a time table that allows you to fit in everything that you know about, it is about being able to handle your life and your work when things go wrong. Much as a car doesn’t need to be steered when it is going in a straight line and meeting our requirements, it is how we change direction when we know the road and when a kangaroo jumps out that are the true tests of our ability to manage our resources and ourselves.

Planning is not everything, as anyone who has read Helmuth von Moltke the Elder or von Clausewitz will know: “no plan survives contact with the enemy”. In this case, however, the enemy is not just those events that seek to confound us, it can be us as well! You can have the best plan in the world that relies upon you starting on Day X, and yet you don’t. You may have excellent reasons for this but, the fact remains, you have now introduced problems into your own process. You have met the enemy and it is you. This illustrates the critical importance of ensuring that we have an accurate assessment of our own philosophies – and we do have to be very honest.

There is no point in a student building an elaborate time management plan that relies upon them changing the habits of a lifetime in a week. But this puts the onus upon us as well: there is no point in us fabricating a set of expectations that a student cannot meet because they do not yet have a mature philosophy for understanding what is required. We don’t give up (of course!) but we must now think about how we can scaffold and encourage such change in a manageable way. I find reflection very handy, as I’ve said before, as watching students write things like “I planned for this but then I didn’t do it! WHY?” allows me to step in and discuss this at the point that the student realises that they have a problem.

I am not saying that a student who has a philosophy of “Maybe one day I will pass by accident” should be encouraged to maintain such lassitude, but we must be honest and realise that demanding that their timeliness and process maturity spring fully-formed from their foreheads is an act of conjuring reserved only for certain Greek Gods. (Even Caligula couldn’t manage it and he had far greater claim to this than most.) I like to think of this in terms of similarity of action. If anything I do is akin to walking up to someone and yelling “You should hand in on time, do better!” then I had better re-think my strategy.

The development of a personal philosophy, especially when you may not have ever been exposed to some of the great exemplars, is a fundamentally difficult task. You first need to understand that such a concept exists, then gain the vocabulary for discussing it, then interpret your current approach and see the value of change. Once you have performed all of those tasks, then we can start talking about getting from A to B. If you don’t know what I’m talking about or can’t understand why it’s important, or even discuss core concepts, then I’m yelling at you in the corridor and you’ll nod, compliantly, until I go away. Chances of you taking positive steps in the direction that I want? Very low. Probably, nil. And if it does happen, either it’s accidental or you didn’t actually need my help.

I try to be stoic but I must be honest and say that if Nero sentenced me to death, I’d nod, say “I expected that”, then put on some fast saxophone music and leg it up over the seven hills and far away. I don’t think I’d ever actually expect true stoicism from most of my students. but a simple incorporation of the fact that not everything works out as you think it will would be a definite improvement over the current everything will work out in my favour expectation that seems to be the hallmark of the more frequently disappointed and distressed among them. The trick is that I first have to make them realise that this is something that, with thought, they can not only fix but use to make a genuine, long-lasting and overwhelmingly positive change in their lives.

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