Withdrawal is Not Running Away
Posted: August 5, 2012 Filed under: Education | Tags: advocacy, education, educational problem, higher education, restructuring, workload 2 CommentsOne of the actions that armies take that is least understood (outside) is that of the strategic withdrawal. Rather than the (very appealing) notion that it’s all knights with coconuts turning around and yelling “run away!”, a correctly conducted withdrawal is far more organised than a rout. We must be honest – if you’re withdrawing then it’s because you cannot hold the ground that you are on but, by conducting a strategic and controlled movement to move into a better position, you are in a better place to fight again another day. If you just fall apart and run around like headless chickens, then your forces are lost and you can be picked off. Make it back to a place that you can defend, with enough of your forces left, you are much harder to beat.
Right now, Australia is going through a period of academic restructuring: cuts and changes being made to reduce headcount, to shrink budgets and to keep things running. We are, effectively, in withdrawal. If we were looking to shut schools and Universities down, then this should have been our first action. If we are trimming, it is because we are trying to move to a place where we can hold our ground, in theory. The problem I have is that, from my observations, we look more as if we are in rout. The Australian Army has sets of principles and considerations for every possible phase of war, including the Withdrawal. I shall list them here, with some explanation. (I am not discussing the rightness or necessity of the restructurings themselves at the moment, that is a post for another day.)
Key Principles
- Co-operation – everything has to work together effectively. Teamwork is crucial. You share the dangers, risks, burdens and the opportunities.
- Security – people must be able to be free enough to act, if people aren’t doing their jobs because they’re trying to keep themselves safe the whole thing can fail.
- Offensive Action – there is a surprisingly large amount of trying to stay in control of the situation. You want to seize the initiative, be in control and keep things going your way. Yes, you’re going the other way but under your terms and heading towards a definite objective.
- Surprise – the enemy should be the last to know when you are moving and should be stunned when they overrun your old position and fund you gone.
- Maintenance of Morale – everyone has to think that this is a survivable situation. Group cohesion must be high and everyone should feel valuable and believe in what is going on.
Basic Considerations
- Timings – you need to have a really good idea of how long everything takes so that you can plan. How long will it take to get to the new position? Who has to move first? How long is it before you can go back onto the offensive?
- Reconnaissance – you need to go and look at the pathways that you’re taking to work out if it will work. You don’t want to be surprised by someone else on the way back. Your recon elements will tell you what is going on and help you to plan.
- Sequence of withdrawal – you need to have a clear, well-defined and clearly disseminated sequence of withdrawal. Everyone knows who moves next and when their turn is. This is essential to the maintenance of morale.
- Clean break – at some point, you need to get away from the people who are chasing you. While your elements are in position and dealing with the enemy, they cannot move. When you have broken free, you can move faster and further. If you’ve staged it properly, your final elements will move into the new, defensible position and everyone will have some small time before the next wave hits your new position.
- Firm Bases – you need well-defined points along the way so that you can regroup and regain your control. This is vital to keeping things moving and under clear command, as well as giving a place where you can cause problems for your enemy.
Of course, the army has it easy in some respects, because they are moving to a new physical location while maintaining their headcount, not moving to a new mode of operation and trying to shed jobs along the way. But, looking at those lists, is it any wonder that there are concerns in those Universities as to how and where the cuts are coming?
How can you stress co-operation and maintenance of morale when you are sending the message that some staff are now surplus to requirement? Do we feel secure enough in our areas to be able to work to our fullest? (I don’t think that surprise quite works in this context, unless you make your school such a powerhouse of success that your administrators are surprised into leaving you alone!) Our ‘offensive action’ is our learning and teaching, and research. Will we be doing the best work if we’re worried about a divided and judging environment? How do we work with other people if we know that the least successful may become targets?
Who, in this case, is actually the enemy?
I suspect that people going through this process would really like to know how long they’ll be going through this process and what the rest points are along the way. How would you feel if someone said “Well, we’ve got to do something over the next three years.” Can you even sensibly think in that kind of time frame? Where are the steps along the way? What happens first? What happens next? How long for?
How long will it be before everything gets back to normal? When will be firm and ready to go forward again?
As I said, I’m not seeing much in the way of systematic and bold planning across most of the Universities I’ve looked at. I’ve seen ‘encouragement’ schemes and offers of redundancy – that sweaty, across the table staring contest between management and worker. How can you build the semi-random loss of staff that will occur under this approach into your scheme of withdrawal, your timings to recovery, unless you talk about it openly and honestly?
The difference between a withdrawal and a rout is that, at the end of a withdrawal, you are in a sound position, ready to fight again. At the end of a rout, you are not. You are a splintered group of individuals who can be easily overrun and defeated.
I realise that we are talking about people’s careers, their lives, their families, and that the chances of a free and frank exchange of views is unlikely, but that makes it even more important for us to be clear on what is intended so that we can make decisions based on an overall vision and a sound plan that takes all of the characteristics into account.
No doubt, with a new Vice Chancellor and a new Executive Dean, our time is not far away to at least consider what we will do in this space. I await the outcome with interest.
And not a little trepidation.
Whackademia: Anectopia, More Like. (A Rather Opinionated Review)
Posted: August 4, 2012 Filed under: Education, Opinion | Tags: blogging, education, ethics, higher education, richard hil, thinking, whackademia, work/life balance, workload 5 CommentsI recently posted about some of the issues that we face in Academia and, being honest, they aren’t small problems and they aren’t limited to one locale or country. You may also recall that I wrote a summary of a radio interview with Richard Hil, the author of Whackademia and I said that I’d write more on Richard’s thoughts when I finished the book.
Hmm. Be careful what you commit to. This book is long on moan but short on solution. But, to explain this, I must be long on moan – please forgive me. I realise that some of you may feel that I am a heavily corporatised shill, who the book is targeted against, and therefore unworthy to comment on this so caustically. Believe me when I say that I believe that my role is to hold my integrity in my job while trying to achieve a better environment in which all of us can perform our jobs – and I believe that anyone who knows me and what I do would agree with that. If I am a shill, then I am the shill that you want on your side because it would be harder to find anyone more committed to the purity of learning and teaching and the world enriching nature of research. Yes, I am an idealist who walks with the devil sometimes, but my soul is still my own.
There were a couple of points in the original radio interview when I would have preferred that Hil go into more detail, or provide some more supporting evidence. I can honestly say that my desire for some more substance has still not been met.
There is no doubt that there are problems, that rampant managerialism is not helping, that a review of the sector in the light of a reduced commitment to funding from the government is important. But what is presented in Hil’s book is a stream of unattributed complaint, whinging and, above all, a constant litany of admissions of unethical behaviour from Hil’s interview participants – with the defence that they were told to comply so, of course, they did. Rather than interpreting this as a group of noble warriors being forced to bend their heads before a cruel and unjust overlord, I read this as the words of people who, having one of the most important jobs in the world, took the easier path.
Do I think that I’ve ever assigned a mark to a student that they didn’t earn?
No. No, I don’t. This is at odds with any number of Hil’s interviewees who freely admitted to fixing marks when asked to, bending over in the face of the administrative wind and, then, having the hide to complain about slipping standards and lack of freedom. I don’t interpret the monitoring levels of academic progress and student progressions rates as a requirement to pass people, I regard it as a way of ensuring that we fairly advertise what is required to pass our courses, that we provide opportunities for students to display their ability and that we focus on education – taking difficult things and conveying them to students.
Show me someone who is proud that their course is so tough that 90% of students fail it and, frankly, I think that they can call themselves anything they like, as long as the word teacher or educator isn’t used. I could fail 100% of students who take my course – gaze upon my works, for there are none as smart as I! This isn’t academic integrity, this is hubris.
Why am I so disappointed in this work? Because I agree with a number of Hil’s points but he presents the weakest, anecdotal means for supporting it. “Whackademia” is eminently dismissible and this is a terrible thing, as it makes the genuine problems that are raised easier to dismiss.
I am still desperately searching for a solution, a proposal from Hil that is more tangible than a fragmented wish list and anything other than his journey through a poisonous and frustrated Anectopia – light on fact but dripping with salacious, unsubstantiated detail. I really shouldn’t be surprised. If you read the contents page, you’ll see that Chapter 7 is entitled “Enough Complaint: now what?” on page 193. Given that the book is over by page 230, that’s a lot of complaint to solution! (Note to self, check the ratio in this post…)
Let me give you some quotes:
“Additionally, older interviewees argued that younger academics were far more likely to have adopted today’s regulatory rationalities, in contrast to more seasoned academics who are perhaps more resistant to the new order. Whether or not this is true is less important than the fact that, to survive and thrive in the current tertiary culture, certain compromises may have to be made – even if this feels at times like putting one’s soul out to tender.” p91
Whether or not this is true? Hang on, truth is optional in this sentence?
Let me put that quote back together with the qualifiers and questionable modifiers highlighted.
“Additionally, older interviewees argued that younger academics were far more likely to have adopted today’s regulatory rationalities, in contrast to more seasoned academics who are perhaps more resistant to the new order. Whether or not this is true is less important than the fact that, to survive and thrive in the current tertiary culture, certain compromises may have to be made – even if this feels at times like putting one’s soul out to tender.”
“faculties – sometimes referred to as ‘corporate silos'” p87
“These sorts of observations might be dismissed out of hand by today’s university managers as elitist, sentimental drivel, born of resentment of the new corporate reality. Well, if indeed these reflections are drivel then they are shared by all but one of the ten or so older professors I interviewed for this book.”
Hil’s book is identified on the cover as a searing exposé from an insider but, as someone who is also on the inside, it appears that the insides that we inhabit are distinctly different. No doubt, there are people inside my own institution who would read Hil’s words and shiver with the rightness of his words: “Yes, I am being pushed around!”, “Yes, I have to take shortcuts because big bad Admin makes me!”, “Yes, students are just sometimes too stupid for my wonderful course and I should be allowed to fail 80% of them!” But I’d disagree with them as much as I disagree with Hil.
The greatest disappointment I ever feel is when someone squanders their opportunities and their gifts, especially when they destroy opportunities for other people. In this case, not only has Hil wasted his spot in the sun, he has made it harder for a more thoughtful and constructive book to be written as his work, writ large in the media and read widely, will control and shape the debate for some time to come.
Again, for shame, sir.
The 1-Year Degree – what’s your reaction?
Posted: July 30, 2012 Filed under: Education | Tags: constructive student pedagogy, curriculum, education, educational problem, educational research, higher education, in the student's head, learning, principles of design, reflection, resources, student perspective, teaching, teaching approaches, thinking, tools, workload 2 CommentsI’m going to pose a question and I’d be interested in your reaction.
“Is there a structure and delivery mechanism that could produce a competent professional graduate from a degree course such as engineering or computer science, which takes place over a maximum of 12 months including all assessment, without sacrificing quality or content?”
What was your reaction? More importantly, what is the reasoning behind your reaction?
For what it’s worth my answer is “Not with our current structures but, apart from that, maybe.” which is why one of my side projects is an attempt to place an entire degree’s worth of work into a 12-month span as a practice exercise for discussing the second and third year curriculum review that we’re holding later on this year.
Our ‘standard’ estimate for any normal degree program is that a student is expected to have a per-semester load of four courses (at 3 units a course, long story) and each of these courses will require 156 hours from start to finish. (This is based on 10 hours per week, including contact and non-contact, and roughly 36 hours for revision towards examination or the completion of other projects.) Based on this estimate, and setting up an upper barrier of 40 hours/week, for all of the good research-based reasons that I’ve discussed previously, there is no way that I can just pick up the existing courses and drop them into a year. A three-year program has six semesters, with four courses per semester, which gives an hour burden of 24*156 = 3,744. At 40 hours per week, we’d need 93.6 weeks (let’s call that 94), or 1.8 years.
But, hang on, we already have courses that are 6-unit and span two semesters – in fact, we have enormous projects for degree programs like Honours that are worth the equivalent of four courses. Interestingly, rather than having an exam every semester, these have a set of summative and formative assignments embedded to allow the provision of feedback and the demonstration of knowledge and skill acquisition – does this remove the need to have 36 hours for exam study for each semester if we build the assignments correctly?
Let’s assume that it does. Now we have a terminal set of examinations at the end of each year, instead of every semester. Now I have 12 courses at 120 hours each and 12 at 156 hours each. Now we’re down to 3,312 – which is only 1.6 years. Dang. Still not there. But it’s ok, I can see all of you who have just asked “Well, why are you so keen on using examinations if you’re happy with summative assignments testing concepts as you go and then building in the expectation of this knowledge in later modules?” Let’s drop the exam requirement even further to a final set of professional level assessment criteria, carried out at the end of the degree to test high-level concepts and advanced skills. Now, of the 24 courses that a student sits, almost all assessment work has moved into continuous assessment mode, rich in feedback, with summative checkpoints and a final set of examinations as part of the four capstone courses at the end. This gives us 3,024 hours – about 1.45 years.
But this is also ignoring that the first week of many of these courses is required revision after some 6-18 weeks of inactivity as the students go away to summer break or home for various holidays. Let’s assume even further that, with the exception of the first four courses that they do, that we build this continuously so that skills and knowledge are reinforced as micro slides, scattered throughout the work, supported with recordings, podcasts, notes, guides and quick revision exercises in the assessment framework. Now I can slice maybe 5 hours off 20 of the courses (the last 20) – cutting me down by another 100 hours and that’s half a month saved, down to 1.4 years.
Of course, I’m ignoring a lot of issues here. I’m ignoring the time it takes someone to digest information but, having raised that, can you tell me exactly how long it takes a student to learn a new concept? This is a trick question as the answer generally depends upon the question “how are you teaching them?” We know that lectures are one of the worst ways to transfer information, with A/V displays, lectures and listening all having a retention rate less than 40%. If you’re not retaining, your chances of learning something are extremely low. At the same time, somewhere between 30-50% of the time that we’re allocating to those courses we already teach are spent in traditional lectures – at time of writing. We can improve retention (of both knowledge and students) when we use group work (50% and higher for knowledge) or get the students to practice (75%) or, even better, instruct someone else (up to 90%). If we can restructure the ’empty’ or ‘low transfer’ times into other activities that foster collaboration or constructive student pedagogy with a role transfer that allows students to instruct each other, then we can potentially greatly improve our usage of time.
If we use this notion and slice, say, 20 hours from each course because we can get rid of that many contact hours that we were wasting and get the same, if not better, results, we’re down to 2,444 hours, about 1.18 years. And I haven’t even started looking at the notion of concept alignment, where similar concepts are taught across two different concepts and could be put in one place, taught once, consistently and then built upon for the rest of the course. Suddenly, with the same concepts and a potentially improved educational design – we’re looking the 1-year degree in the face.
Now, there will be people who will say “Well, how does the student mature in this time? That’s only one year!” to which my response is “Well, how are you training them for maturity? Where are the developing exercises? The formative assessment based on careful scaffolding in societal development and intellectual advancement?” If the appeal of the three-year degree is that people will be 19-20 when they graduate, and this is seen as a good thing, then we solve this problem for the 1-year degree by waiting two years before they start!
Having said all of this, and believing that a high quality 1-year degree is possible, let me conclude by saying that I think that it is a terrible idea! University is more than a sequence of assessments and examinations, it is a culture, a place for intellectual exploration and the formation of bonds with like-minded friends. It is not a cram school to turn out a slightly shell-shocked engineer who has worked solidly, and without respite, for 52 weeks. However, my aim was never actually to run a course in a year, it was to see how I could restructure a course to be able to more easily modularise it, to break me out of the mental tyranny of a three- or four-year mandate and to focus on learning outcomes, educational design and sound pedagogy. The reason that I am working on this is so that I can produce a sound course structure with which students can engage, regardless of whether they are full-time or not, clearly outlining dependency and requirements. Yes, if we break this up into part-time, we need to add revision modules back in – but if we teach it intensively (or on-line) then those aren’t required. This is a way to give students choice and the freedom to come in at any age, with whatever time they have, but without sacrificing the quality of the underlying program. This is a bootstrap program for a developing nation, a quick entry point for people who had to go to work – this is making up for decades of declining enrolments in key areas.
This is going on a war footing against the forces of ignorance.
There are many successful “Open” universities that use similar approaches but I wanted to go through the exercise myself, to allow me the greatest level of intellectual freedom while looking at our curriculum review. Now, I feel that I can focus on Knowledge Areas for my specifics and on the program as a whole, freed of the binding assumption that there is an inevitable three-year grind ahead for any student. Perhaps one of the greatest benefits for me is the thought that, for students who can come to us for three years, I can put much, much more into the course if they have the time – and these things, of interest, regarding beauty, of intellectual pursuits, can replace some of the things that we’ve lost over the years in the last two decades of change in University.
Brief but good news
Posted: July 29, 2012 Filed under: Education | Tags: baldwin wallace, book, community, curriculum, education, educational problem, educational research, higher education, puzzle based learning, raja sooriamurthi, resources, teaching, teaching approaches, tools, workload, zbigniew michalewicz 4 CommentsA happy surprise in my mailbox today, but first the background. We’ve been teaching Puzzle Based Learning at Adelaide for several years now, based on Professor Zbigniew Michalewicz’s concept for a course that encouraged problem solving in a domain-free environment. (You can read more details about it by searching for Puzzle Based Learning with the surnames Falkner, Michalewicz and Sooriamurthi – we’ve had work published on this in IEEE Computer and as a workshop at SIGCSE, among several others.) Zbyszek (Adelaide), Raja (Sooriamurthi, a Teaching Professor at CMU) and I teamed up with Professor Ed Meyer (Physics at Baldwin-Wallace) to put together a textbook proposal to help people teach this information.
Great news – our proposal has been accepted by an excellent publishing house who appear to be genuinely excited about the book! As this is my first book, I’m very excited and pleased – but it’s a great reflection on the strength of the team and our composite skills and background, especially with the inter-disciplinary aspects. I’ve seen a lot of exciting work come out of Baldwin-Wallace and, while this is my first time working with Ed, I’m really looking forward to it. (Zbyszek, Raja and I have worked together a lot but I’m still excited to be working with them again!)
Good news after a rather difficult week.
To Leave or Not To Leave (Academia)
Posted: July 28, 2012 Filed under: Education, Opinion | Tags: advocacy, authenticity, blogging, community, education, higher education, reflection, teaching, teaching approaches, work/life balance, workload 6 CommentsThere’s a post that’s been making the rounds from a University of New Mexico academic who is leaving to go to Google. Mark has blogged on it, and linked to a more positive post that reinforces why you would stay in the job, but my reaction to the original post is that there are far too many solid, scoring, points being made and, while it’s not gloom for the whole sector yet, there are large storm clouds hanging heavily over our heads.
I think that we’ve made some crucial mistakes that, on reflection, we need to address if we want to stop people leaving. Be in no doubt, when the storms come, yes, the casual workforce takes it in the neck but a lot of other people jump as well. They go somewhere else that supports them, inspires them, challenges them and does not make them wonder why they’re doing the job. It takes 10-20 years to produce a “useful” academic. Get the University climate wrong and they will pick up and leave. Will that work for everyone? No. It will work for your passionate, knowledgable, personable, approachable and amazing staff who will easily find work elsewhere.
Which, of course, leaves your schools and departments gutted of the firebrands, the doers, the visionaries and those who can inspire and lead the rest of us to the same level. I believe that we can all lift to the level of these great people – if we can remain in contact with them. Take them away and we stagnate. We all know, deep down, that bad cultures come from uninspired people, and uninspired people are uninspiring. Gut a school enough and you will have a terrible time of rebuilding it. But what happened?
I think that we made three terrible mistakes.
- We let people cut our funding and we all just worked harder.
If you can cut the amount that you pay the worker, while keeping the same productivity level, why on earth would you pay them any more? You separate the worth of the activity or the person from the value that they produce and then you try to maximise your profits. Why do people keep cutting University and school funding? Because we just step up and work harder because we are committed to our jobs.
What is worse, we not only work harder at our real jobs, we do all of the extra stuff as well. - We did all of the admin on top of our real jobs, which include mentoring, guidance, teaching, learning, research, and so on.
This is the crazy thing – not only are we all working harder meeting imposed metrics and standards, we’re also filling out countless forms, sitting around in meetings arguing about paperclip purchase optimisation (or similar) or sitting through yearly regurgitations of what we’ve done, delivered by other academics who can’t manage, and we do it almost as hard as we do the things that we get paid to do as academics. - We didn’t sit down and weigh up the future cost of steps 1 and 2.
And here’s the killer. Because we’re doing 1 and 2, and because the sky hasn’t fallen and education is still happening, administrators and funding bodies would be crazy to not try and push this further in order to see if they can get even more savings out and still maintain the same levels. This is fundamental business practice – pay the least that you have to for your supplies, charge the most that you can for your product.
Ultimately, this will kill us. We are have gone from comfortable, to lean and mean – now we’re heading towards starvation. Rather than worrying about this, we stand and admire ourselves in the mirror like mentally ill thirteen year-olds, congratulating ourselves on how good we look when we are starting to lose important function – irreversibly. The fat, such as it was (and I think that has been overplayed for political reasons), is gone. Now we’re cutting muscle and organs.
Governments talked about tight times, funding bodies talked about financial crises, business found cheaper overseas workers, off-shoring meant that local investment started to dry up – we listened, we nodded, we said “Ok, we’ll keep going” and we sent completely the wrong message.
Universities take 10-20 years to train academics, but the impact of a drop in educated populace takes about the same time to really have an impact on the workforce. This is well beyond the average lifespan of an elected official and it’s not as direct as the “in your face” nature of a tax increase. But this is our fault, to and extent, because we know that this is a problem and, as a group, we took it.
I had an argument with someone the other day about the role of academics and they were, I think, angry with me because I placed pedagogy and learning quality as a higher priority than convenience of access to the students. Of course, I want everyone to have access to Uni but if what we are teaching is not of sufficient quality then there is no point coming! As a teaching academic, this should be my job. Social equity, access to University, increasing mobility and improving the school systems? That’s the government’s job, the government’s purse, working in association with the schools and universities – I welcome it! I support it! But I have neither the funds, the influence or the training to actually do this. Yet, because of shortfalls elsewhere, as our funding is cut, as the casual workforce grows, as we all work harder , more and more of the things that are not core fall on me and my colleagues.
This is a fantastic job. This is an important job. Universities, in whatever form, are vital to the future and development of our species – when they are run properly and to a high standard. I do not think that all is lost, but I am rapidly reaching a point where I think that we have to stop taking it, look at those crucial three mistakes and say “No more.” Funding bodies, administrators and, on occasion, we ourselves are devaluing ourselves through our professionalism, our dedication and our politeness. Yes, we need to be pragmatic but we have worth, we do a good job and we are part of an essential role: education must be maintained.
My priority is to my students and my colleagues, and to the future. I think that it’s time for some serious re-thinking.
The Early-Career Teacher
Posted: July 24, 2012 Filed under: Education, Opinion | Tags: advocacy, authenticity, blogging, community, curriculum, design, education, educational problem, educational research, ethics, herdsa, higher education, learning, principles of design, reflection, resources, teaching, teaching approaches, thinking, tools, universal principles of design, work/life balance, workload Leave a commentRecently, I mentioned the Australian Research Council (ARC) grant scheme, which recognises that people who have had their PhDs for less than five years are regarded as early-career researchers (ECRs). ECRs have a separate grant scheme (now, they used to have a different way of being dealt with in the grant application scheme) that recognises the fact that their track records, the number of publications and activity relative to opportunity, is going to be less than that of more seasoned individuals.
What is interesting about this is that someone who has just finished their PhD will have spent (at least) three years, more like four, doing research and, we hope, competent research under guidance for the last two of those years. So, having spent a couple of years doing research, we then accept that it can take up to five years for people to be recognised as being at the same level.
But, for the most part, there is no corresponding recognition of the early-career teacher, which is puzzling given that there is no requirement to meet any teaching standards or take part in any teaching activities at all before you are put out in front of a class. You do no (or are not required to do any) teaching during your PhD in Australia, yet we offer support and recognition of early status for the task that you HAVE been doing – and don’t have a way to recognise the need to build up your teaching.
We discussed ideas along these lines at a high-level meeting that I attended this morning and I brought up the early-career teacher (and mentoring program to support it) because someone had brought up a similar idea for researchers. Mentoring is very important, it was one of the big HERDSA messages and almost everywhere I go stresses this, and it’s no surprise that it’s proposed as a means to improve research but, given the realities of the modern Australian University where more of our budget comes from teaching than research, it is indicative of the inherent focus on research that I need to propose teaching-specific mentoring in reaction to research-specific mentoring, rather than vice versa.
However, there are successful general mentoring schemes where senior staff are paired with more junior staff to give them help with everything that they need and I quite like this because it stresses the nexus of teaching and research, which is supposed to be one of our focuses, and it also reduces the possibility of confusion and contradiction. But let’s return to the teaching focus.
The impact of an early-career teacher program would be quite interesting because, much as you might not encourage a very raw PhD to leap in with a grant application before there was enough supporting track record, you might have to restrict the teaching activities of ECTs until they had demonstrated their ability, taken certain courses or passed some form of peer assessment. That, in any form, is quite confronting and not what most people expect when they take up a junior lectureship. It is, however, a practical way to ensure that we stress the value of teaching by placing basic requirements on the ability to demonstrate skill within that area! In some areas, as well as practical skill, we need to develop scholarship in learning and teaching as well – can we do this in the first years of the ECT with a course of educational psychology, discipline educational techniques and practica to ensure that our lecturers have the fundamental theoretical basis that we would expect from a school teacher?
Are we dancing around the point and, extending the heresy, require something much closer to the Diploma of Education to certify academics as teachers, moving the ECR and the ECT together to give us an Early Career Academic (ECA), someone who spends their first three years being mentored in research and teaching? Even ending up with (some sort of) teaching qualification at the end? (With the increasing focus on quality frameworks and external assessment, I keep waiting for one of our regulatory bodies to slip in a ‘must have a Dip Ed/Cert Ed or equivalent’ clause sometime in the next decade.)
To say that this would require a major restructure in our expectations would be a major understatement, so I suspect that this is a move too far. But I don’t think it’s too much to put limits on the ways that we expose our new staff to difficult or challenging teaching situations, when they have little training and less experience. This would have an impact on a lot of teaching techniques and accepted practices across the world. We don’t make heavy use of Teaching Assistants (TAs) at my Uni but, if we did, a requirement to reduce their load and exposure would immediately push more load back onto someone else. At a time when salary budgets are tight and people are already heavily loaded, this is just not an acceptable solution – so let’s look at this another way.
The way that we can at least start this, without breaking the bank, is to emphasise the importance of teaching and take it as seriously as we take our research: supporting and developing scholarship, providing mentoring and extending that mentoring until we’re sure that the new educators are adapting to their role. These mentors can then give feedback, in conjunction with the staff members, as to what the new staff are ready to take on. Of course, this requires us to carefully determine who should be mentored, and who should be the mentor, and that is a political minefield as it may not be your most senior staff that you want training your teachers.
I am a fairly simple man in many ways. I have a belief that the educational role that we play is not just staff-to-student, but staff-to-staff and student-to-student. Educating our new staff in the ways of education is something that we have to do, as part of our job. There is also a requirement for equal recognition and support across our two core roles: learning and teaching, and research. I’m seeing a lot of positive signs in this direction so I’m taking some heart that there are good things on the nearish horizon. Certainly, today’s meeting met my suggestions, which I don’t think were as novel as I had hoped they would be, with nobody’s skull popping out of their mouth. I take that as a positive sign.
Puppet on a String: A Summary of My Corruption by Extrinsic Rewards
Posted: July 16, 2012 Filed under: Education, Opinion | Tags: authenticity, blogging, education, educational problem, educational research, ethics, feedback, fiero, higher education, reflection, thinking, work/life balance, workload 3 Comments
I recently posted that I was thinking about my own contributions and asking what, if anything, would denote something that could be recognised as my mastery of my discipline. On thinking about this, I realised that, once again, I was asking someone else to value my work. For those of you who are educational specialists, rather than a discipline researcher who is on his way to becoming an educational researcher within the discipline, this is probably somewhat amusing, given I keep talking about the need to reduce extrinsic motivation in my students.
I have changed career several times and, if you look at why I’ve done this, a pattern quickly emerges. I tend to leave at the point where I have become competent enough that other people start to tell me that what I am doing is useful, valuable and start trying to reward me. Yet, I go into jobs seeking that kind of recognition and reward. I am corrupted in my intent, by the rewards, and then my intrinsic reward mechanisms become compromised and, after becoming deeply unhappy, I leave.
I realised, over the weekend, that I was becoming so pre-occupied with external approval that it was making me extremely vulnerable to criticism and it was corrupting me in trying to do something that is, whether I like it or not, very important and that I also happen to be good at.
Right now, I am in the middle of trying to work out how to divorce myself from the external rewards that I, irritatingly, crave and that, ultimately, then reduce the joy I take in doing things for my own reasons. It’s not surprising that the tasks that I enjoy the most at the moment are the big challenges, the ones where I’m working several levels above my pay grade or the usual expectations of someone of my level. I’m doing these things because they’re important and, because I’m doing it ‘out of cycle’ so to speak, I can’t be externally rewarded for them – I can just do a good job.
It’s in this same mode of thinking that I’ve decided not to spend any time applying for any local teaching and excellence awards. (I was about to comment on my potential eligibility but this is just another quest for a pat on the head – so I’ve deleted it.) I am either doing my job in the way that I should, and the expectations should be of a satisfactory performance that provides students with an excellent experience, or I should receive guidance, counselling and remedial assistance from my employer. Ultimately, if I don’t meet the standards then I should probably be fired. But if I’m doing well, then that is my job and I don’t need a piece of paper or a cheque to make things better. In fact, that money and time (in deciding upon the awards or writing the applications) should be directed to people who need the improvement, not people who are excelling. I have a meeting with my boss on Friday week and he will tell me whether I’m meeting standard or not.
Now there is a great deal of difference between writing a long application for an award (which is probably not the best investment of time and is seeking extrinsic recognition) and being sent on a course that might be useful because you’ve demonstrated an ability to do something (providing you with useful skills and the ability to develop further). As a general principle, skill development is going to be more useful than a pat on a head. Skill development also works for everyone, it’s just that the courses you use for development vary from person to person.
But this is, of course, completely at odds with the extensive systems of measurement that are now being placed on academics. We are (with widely varying levels of accuracy) measured extensively in terms of learning and teaching, research and administration. By not applying for these awards, I may be significantly altering my possibility of later promotion and opportunity. And, yet, I have to ask myself if I really need to be promoted? What does it mean? I’ve already discovered that people are happy to let you do a wide range of jobs without the requisite ‘academic level’ if you can demonstrate enough aptitude. Sure, it would mean I’d never be able to do certain jobs but, having a look at those jobs, I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing. 🙂
This is a strange time for me. I can now see the strings around me and how they’ve pulled me around for all of my life. Because I am such a strong believer in being as honest as possible with my students, it has forced me to be honest with myself, as I tear apart the framework I teach within to see how I can improve it and help my students to become self-regulated, intrinsically motivated and happy. Authenticity is the core for me and it is why I can teach with passion.
I was looking at Facebook recently and thinking about the “Like” button. I use it to mean “I am happy about this” or “I support you” but, rather than telling someone this, I hit the “Like” button. I’ve recently noticed that there are “Like” levels in WordPress and as I’ve hit, arbitrary, milestones I’ve received insincere automated badges.
Some of my readers (thank you, again) have been letting me know how they have been using the stuff from here and that has been really helpful for me. I realise that, in this community, “Like” generally means “I agree” or “Nicely written thoughts that ring true” but getting an actual account of how someone has used something that I said turned out to be really powerful. (Unsurprisingly, given how much Kohn I’m reading at the moment!)
So – where to from here? The first thing is to keep to my 40-45 hour working week. That has allowed me to get enough reflection time to get to this stage. I suspect the next is to keep plugging away at everything. This is most definitely not the time to throw everything in the air and meditate in a field. I’ve been trying to think about the advice that I would give to a student in a similar situation and I think I would tell them to keep doing everything and set some time aside over the next couple of weeks to identify the key issues, then start stripping away clutter until they were able to get a clear view of how they could achieve what was important to them. It will, at least, be a start.
Wrath of Kohn: Well, More Thoughts on “Punished by Rewards”
Posted: July 16, 2012 Filed under: Education | Tags: education, educational problem, feedback, games, higher education, in the student's head, measurement, principles of design, reflection, student perspective, teaching, teaching approaches, thinking, universal principles of design, work/life balance, workload 1 CommentYesterday, I was discussing my reading of Alfie Kohn’s “Punished by Rewards” and I was talking about a student focus to this but today I want to talk about the impact on staff. Let me start by asking you to undertake a quick task. Let’s say you are looking for a new job, what are the top ten things that you want to get from it? Write them down – don’t just think about them, please – and have them with you. I’ll put a picture of Kohn’s book here to stop you looking ahead. 🙂
It’s ok, I’ll wait. Written your list?
How far up the list was “Money”? Now, if you wrote money in the top three, I want you to imagine that this new job will pay you a fair wage for what you’re going to do and you won’t have any money troubles. (Bit of a reach, sometimes, I know but please give it a try.) With that in mind, look at your list again.
Does the word “excellent incentive scheme” or “great bonus package” figure anywhere on that list? If it does, is it in the top half or the bottom half? If Money wasn’t top three, where was it for you?
According to Kohn, very few people actually to make money the top of their list – it tends to be things like ‘type of work’, ‘interesting job’, ‘variety’, ‘challenge’ and stuff like that. So, if that’s the case, why do so many work incentive schemes revolve around giving us money or bonuses as a reward if, for the majority of the population, it’s not the thing that we want? Well, of course, it’s easy. Giving feedback or mentoring is much harder than a $50 gift card, a $2,000 bonus or 500 shares. What’s worse is, because it’s money, it has to be allocated in an artificial scarcity environment or it’s no longer a bonus, it’s an expectation. If you didn’t do this, then the company might go bankrupt.
What if, instead, when you did something really good, you received something that made it easier for you to do all of your work as a recognition of the fact that you’re working a lot? Of course, this would require your manager to have a really good idea of what you were doing and how to improve it, as well as your company being willing to buy you that backlit keyboard with the faux-mink armrest that will let you write reports without even a twinge of arm strain. Some of this, obviously, is part of minimum workplace standards but the idea is that you get something that reflects that your manager understands what you’ve done and is trying to help you to develop further. Carefully selected books, paid trips to useful training, opportunities to further display your skill – all of these are probably going to achieve more of the items on your 10-point list than money will. To quote Kohn, quoting Gruenberg (1980), “The Happy Worker: An Analysis of Educational and Occupational Differences in Determinants of Job Satisfaction”, American Journal of Sociology, 86, pp 267-8:
“Extrinsic rewards become an important determinant of overall job satisfaction only among workers for whom intrinsic rewards are relatively unavailable.”
There are, Kohn argues, many issues with incentive schemes as reward and one of these is the competitive environment that it fosters. I discussed this yesterday so I’ll move to one of the other, which is focusing on meeting the requirements for reward at the expense of quality and in a way that is as safe as possible. Let me give you an example that I recently encountered outside of work: Playing RockBand or SingStar (music games that score your performance). Watch me and my friends who actually sing playing a singing game: yes, we notice the score, but we don’t care about the score. We interpret, we mess around, we occasionally affect the voices of the Victorian-era female impersonator characters from Little Britain. Then watch other groups of people who are playing the game to make the highest score. They don’t interpret. They don’t harmonise spontaneously. In many cases, they barely even sing and focus on making the minimum tunefully accurate noise possible at exactly the right time, having learned the sequence, to achieve the highest score. The quality of the actual singing is non-existent, because this isn’t singing, it’s score-maximisation. Similarly, risk taking has been completely removed. (As an aside, I have excellent pitch and, to my ears, most people who try to maximise their score sound out of tune because they are within the tolerances that the game accepts, but by choosing not to actually sing, there is no fundamental thread of musicality that runs through their performance. I once saw a professional singer deliver a fantastic version of a song, only to be rated as mediocre by the system,)
On Saturday, my wife and I went to the Melbourne-based Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) to attend the Game Masters gaming exhibition. It was fantastic, big arcade section and tons of great stuff dedicated to gaming. (Including the design document for Deus Ex!) There were lots of games to play, including SingStar (Scored karaoke), RockBand (multi-instrument band playing with feedback and score) and some dancing games. Going past RockBand, Katrina pointed out how little fun the participants appeared to be having and, on looking at it, it was completely true. The three boys in there were messing around with pseudo-musical instruments but, rather than making a loud and joyful noise, they were furrowed of brow and focused on doing precisely the right things at the right times to get positive feedback and a higher score. Now, there are many innovations emerging in this space and it is now possible to explore more and actually take some risks for innovation, but from industry and from life experience, it’s pretty obvious that your perception of what you should be doing and where the reward is going to come from make a huge difference.
If your reward is coming from someone/something else, and they set a bar of some sort, you’re going to focus on reaching that bar. You’re going to minimise the threats to not reaching that bar by playing it safe, colouring inside the lines, trying to please the judge and then, if you don’t get that reward, you’re far more likely to stop carrying out that activity, even if you loved it before. And, boy, if you don’t get that reward, will you feel punished.
I’m not saying Kohn is 100% correct, because frankly I don’t know and I’m not a behaviourist, but a lot of this rings true from my own experience and his use of the studies included in his book, as well as the studies themselves, are very persuasive. I look forward to some discussion on these points!
Richard Hil on “Whackademia”: Conversations with Richard Fidler
Posted: July 14, 2012 Filed under: Education | Tags: blogging, education, higher education, identity, student perspective, teaching, teaching approaches, thinking, whackademia, work/life balance, workload 2 CommentsThe Australian national broadcaster’s Radio National station has a segment called Conversations with Richard Fidler, where the host has a roughly 30 minute chat with someone interesting. A friend (thanks, Cathy!) recently sent me a link to a conversation that Fidler had with Richard Hil, author of “Whackademia: An insider’s account of the troubled university.” She sent me the link of the 25th of June and it’s slightly telling that it took me until the 10th of July, when I was home sick and was looking for things to listen to, that I finally had the chance to devote 30 minutes to just sitting and listening. You can find the link to the podcast itself here, but I’m not sure if it will work outside of Australia. However, I have some thoughts on the podcast that will work just as well if you haven’t listened to it. The vast majority of the words here are my interpretation of Hil and Fidler. I will insert my own comments parenthetically.
Hil is fundamentally concerned with the change in Universities that he perceives as the change in the focus of education and making life less enjoyable and far less free for the academics. He feels that students have become, in the words of Laurie Taylor (from Schwartz’s “Paradox of Choice“), shoppers, in the sense that they are controlled consumers, shaped by marketing, branding and the illusion of choice. Students are becoming far less likely to spend time on campus, with up to a third surveyed reporting that they haven’t made even a single friend. Given the pressures of modern life, and fitting education in and around work and family, this is hardly surprising, especially when combined with the increasing on-line availability of courses.
One of the other elements in play is the strong vocational focus that drives subject and degree choice, students now being far less likely to take courses that are potentially enriching in the future, which often lifted universities up from the requisite lectures and tutorials and allowed students to be involved in the energy of education. It’s also very easy to scoff at “enrichment” courses, especially if it they are marketed in an empty or cynical fashion.
Some universities, such as Macquarie, have experimented with third year courses with titles like “Practical Wisdom” to cover general world, thinking and important issues – but at third year, we have to ask what we have been teaching up until then along similar lines? What are we doing to form the global citizen?
Hil identifies what he refers to as the rise of managers in University, increasing regulation, driving business-speak, business models and performance management drawn from, and more suited to, traditional private enterprise. (He makes a loose argument against the perceived subjectivity of performance reviews, but I didn’t feel it was very strong.) However, how did we get here? Was it the Dawkins Revolution? Hil thinks not.
Hil identifies an early essay by Milton Friedman about the role of University in society and the economy, which advocated a student loan system and a deregulation of the University sector to move it into a competitive business model. (My reading of the essay agrees with Hil but there are some wonderful phrases in the essay on the value of education – I do disagree with Friedman’s slippery slope argument and his argument that denationalisation automatically and magically equates to more choice, among many of his conclusions.) So, post-Friedman and Dawkins, we have a business model between educator and student, more fitting facilitator and consumer.
So, if competition increases choice, as Friedman asserts, has it? Hil refers (not too seriously) to specialist courses in courses that specialise in the study of Surfing, Casinos, David Beckham, Judge Judy, Cyberporn and the Phallus. (One can only hope that there are interlocking partial credit arrangements for the last two, if not four, given Rule #34.) Rather than an indicator of choice, this is an indicator of the “sexing up” of University as part of branding and consumerist issues. (Certainly, in Australia, we are seeing more schools and areas close than we are seeing open and there is no real sense of a locus of excellence for some areas outside of naming rights for institutions.)
In using business language, the University is implicitly stating that they understand the need to speak this language because it allows the consumer to attach value to our offerings but, because we aren’t really businesses, we come across as an amateur theatrical society – possibly looking good out the front but utter chaos behind. Part of this is the myth of our commitment to certain activities such as teaching, which is being increasingly carried out by casual staff, who may not have the background for the course or given the time to develop it. There is an expectation of expertise and deep familiarity, that we as teachers have thought about the work, imbibed it and considered it from all angles in order to move beyond understanding into wisdom – but this is too much to develop in one week! Hil does quickly note that he believes that vast majority of academics are doing the right thing but the increasing student numbers and class sizes, combined with an increasing ‘casualising’ of the work force, are taking us down a certain path.
Hil then talks about the implicit conflict of being a partially publicly, partially externally funded entity and that he believes that public funds were deliberately not given to Universities to make us more private and entrepreneurial. (I may have missed it but I don’t believe that he gives much evidence for this and the host did question him.) Private Universities are up front about being profit seeking, whereas we in the public sector walk a blurred line. Hil also feels pressure from directed retention policies to step attrition that, he feels, can compromise academics standards.
Academics are speaking out but mostly in private, Hil believes, because they are concerned for their futures and retribution. Academic tenure, the principle that academics can speak truth to power, is mostly eroded, with some institutions demanding clearance on all public statements concerning higher education and University matters. He’s also surprised that our Union membership, the National Tertiary Education Union, is very, very low, which appeared to surprise him given the level of discontent. On that note, the interview ended.
(From my perspective, an interesting interview but not a great many supporting facts but, given the topic, that’s probably understandable. I have already ordered Richard Hil’s book to have a look through and if I find something else useful, I’ll blog about it. I note that, at my University, we have very strict guidelines for assigning work to casual lecturing staff, including selecting an area of expertise, providing mentorship and training and most of what Hil talks about here does not appear to have taken as strong a hold in my University as other places, although I can definitely see tendrils!)
A Brief Note on the Blog
Posted: July 8, 2012 Filed under: Education | Tags: blogging, education, measurement, reflection, resources, tools, work/life balance, workload, writing 1 Comment
My posts recently have been getting longer and longer and I think I’m hitting the point where ‘prolix’ is an eligible adjective: I’m at risk of using so many words that people may not finish or start reading, or risk being bored by the posts. Despite the fact that I write quickly, it does take some time to write 2,000 words. I want to write the number of words to carry the point across and make the best of your time and my time.
I’m going to experiment with posts that are as informative/useful but that are slightly shorter, aiming for 1,000 words as an upper bound and splitting posts thematically where possible to keep to this. At the end of July, assuming I remember, I’m going to review this to see how it’s going. (The risk, of course, is that editing to keep inside this frame will consume far more time than just writing. Believe me, I’m aware of that one!)
As always, feedback is very welcome and I reserve the right to completely forget about this and start writing 10,000 word megaposts again because I’ve become carried away. Thanks for reading!
Nick Falkner 