Research as pinball

A followup to this post. (Recap: this is an attempt to model and chronicle the research process, from half-baked idea to more polished proposal.)

So I started with some idea about how the proliferation of learning outcomes and rubrics was in the same ballpark as replacing social norms with statutory law. That's my quarter. I put it in and started playing.

So where did the ball go? Well, the rough trajectory is something like this. I started looking at learning outcomes for a variety of courses to better understand them. That was both fascinating and disheartening. Ultimately, it left me wondering whether we have any clear idea of what a learning outcome even is.

So, I thought, wouldn't it be great if there were some group of people who were more or less exclusively focused on conceptual analysis? We could call them, I don't know, philosophers. So that's where I turned. It turns out there was a moment for analytic philosophy of education (some details here.) I turned to my friend Mr. Google and he kindly gave me this edited volume--The Concept of Educaiton, R.S. Peters, ed. published in 1967. So I'm bouncing around in this particular cluster of bumpers. I don't know how many points I'm racking up, but the ball is still in play.

In particular, there is some helpful analysis on what it means to learn something. I don't know that I have anything interesting to say about these analyses, but they seem at least potentially helpful for better understanding what a learning outcome is, and what kind of learning those outcomes tend to measure. They also seem potentially helpful for better understanding the ordinary conception of learning that went unspoken in the dark, dark days of education when we didn't spell out in exquisite detail every student learning outcome for every assignment.

There's a good chance I'll lose this particular ball at some point, or get kicked over to some other area, but this is where I am now.

Rubrics, learning outcomes, and "hidden law," part 1.

I'm going to try to articulate a half-baked germ of an idea here. There are two goals. One is that I actually do think there is something to the idea, and I'd like to keep exploring it. The other is that in my Foundations of Research class, I try to demonstrate the elements of the research process that we discuss in class. I'm not sure how successful I am at this, and it struck me this semester that I should try to chronicle the actual development of a research project. This is the beginning of that. It may crash and burn--ideas often do--but hopefully the end result will be a glimpse into the evolution of a thought from half-baked to fully-baked (or at least slightly more than half-baked.) Here goes...

I think there's an opening for a conservative (think Burke and Oakeshott) critique of learning outcomes and rubrics. (Am I a terrible candidate to mount a conservative critique of anything? Probably. Should that stop me from trying? Maybe. Will it? Doubtful.) The proliferation of learning outcomes and the explosion of ever more detailed rubrics seem to me to be similar to what Jonathan Rauch describes as the replacement of "hidden law" with statutory law. I'm not that old, yet I don't recall ever having learning outcomes spelled out on a syllabus in college, and I don't recall any rubrics. Instead, there were unwritten rules that governed the classroom and grades. (Or at least I think there were. I haven't tried to spell these out, but surely they existed, right?) These rules were, no doubt, imperfect and imperfectly enforced, but they were there.

Then, somewhere along the way, these unwritten rules started to be replaced with explicit, written policies. Our syllabi got longer. Learning outcomes were spelled out in detail. Rubrics were developed for assessment. And now here we are. My hunch is that we are not in a better place than we were before, and are probably worse off as far as actual teaching and learning goes.

My issues with rubrics and learning outcomes are not new or particularly insightful. But there isn't, or at least I haven't found, anyone who is looking at this from a conservative (small 'c') perspective. There seems to me to be something there worth exploring.

So that's the idea. Half-baked.

Me as student, ch.1, Dr. VT edition

So I've finally read through all the in-house evaluations from last semester that I enticed students to complete. The enticement meant that I got three to four times as many evaluations as I normally do, which means I likely got a more representative sample. The comments suggest that structure (or lack thereof) is both the biggest strength and biggest weakness of the current version of Collo.

It was a little surprising that the deliberately unstructured nature of the course was highlighted as a weakness, but it also reminded me of one of the best (and maybe only) pieces of advice I ever received about teaching--your students aren't like you. I've been thinking about that and my own experiences as a student in an effort to better see my own biases. So this is me as a student, part one.

High school English, junior year, Dr. Von Tiesenhausen. During the first week of class, we were "taught" that every paragraph has five sentences, and our assignment was to write a paragraph that fit the structure of the model paragraph. We read these aloud in class. I wrote a three sentence paragraph about it not being true that all paragraphs had five sentences. I think it was a beautifully written paragraph. VT was not amused. I failed the assignment and he told me that 11th grade was not a good time to drop out of school. I actually agreed with this, so I dropped out of his class.

To say he was structured would be a massive understatement. Clearly I did not handle the imposition of his structure in the most constructive way, but I think the situation foreshadows my general attitude towards imposing strict guidelines on students. If I were a student, I would really like the unstructured nature of Collo and appreciate that nobody was telling me exactly what I had to do and how I had to do it. The course is not for me, though, and in looking back on my own experiences, I think I have a pretty strong reaction to structure that likely places me on the far end of the bell curve. This inclines me to think that I need to redesign the course in a way that is at least moderately at odds with how my 18-22 year old self might prefer it.

At the time, I think I was just being an obnoxious 16 year old kid. In hindsight, I like to think the more high-minded explanation is that VT was prioritizing structure over competency. If he had cared more about whether I was writing well and less about being an ass, some ugliness could have been avoided. I don't ever want the structure of the course or of an assignment to be elevated above the objective of the assignment. But there is a huge gulf between that kind of reverence for rules and a more or less complete laissez faire attitude. I think I need to work on being better at finding that middle ground.

Philosophy of education minus the philosophy

I don't have much to say about this, but I like what Curran has to say in this interview:

I’m a little queasy about is the idea that there is a pragmatist approach to education. I know this is high heresy to say this [laughs], but I really see little connection between Dewey’s pragmatism and his educational thought. I know there are supposed to be obvious connections – modeling both a society and a classroom on the practices of a scientific community, to collaborate on solving problems where you have no authority figure and everyone contributes. That’s supposed to be pragmatic. But it’s only pragmatic if pragmatism is reduced to experimentalism – the doctrine that all knowledge is established experimentally. Even then pragmatism would only motivate one aspect of the educational vision. And it wouldn’t fully justify even that one aspect; neither would it be essential for justifying even that aspect. Philosophers of education who remain influenced by Dewey often invoke the idea that he destroyed the ‘quest for certainty’ and draw a sharp contrast with Plato. They think it’s just evident that if you have a non-pragmatic approach to knowledge then straightaway you’re going to have Plato’s Republic. That’s a preposterous view. If you can’t find any other basis on which to set aside Plato’s Republic, you’re not thinking hard enough. 

I like a lot of what Dewey has to say about education. I'm not a big fan of pragmatism, though. The same is true for me of "critical pedagogy." I don't really have much love for critical theory, but I think a lot of the actual recommendations for teaching that come out of the critical pedagogy movement are really good. In general, I wonder how essential the underlying theories are to the philosophies of education that purport to be based on them. My guess is that what Curran says about pragmatism is true of many schools of thought.  

Politicians, students, and bullshit

In his now famous article "On Bullshit", Harry Frankfurt observes that "one of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit." That was in 1986. Things have not improved. For the first time, I included this essay on my syllabus for an introductory philosophy course. It was one of the first articles we read, and it generated a pretty interesting discussion. During that discussion and in subsequent essays, many students most easily connected Frankfurt's analysis of 'bullshit' to the bullshit they produce in the courses they take. This wasn't necessarily surprising, but it did cause me to think about the extent to which we encourage (or require) the production of bullshit.

I suspect the answer to this is "a lot." When I taught in a writing program, I was more or less told that our goal was to teach students how to bullshit. The techniques we taught would virtually guarantee that students could earn a "bullshitter's 'B'" on an essay. This was not presented as a negative thing. The assumption was that we all understand that a lot of student writing is bullshit, and writing courses are designed to make that bullshit well-crafted. It's easy to see why people might get the sense that it's bullshit all the way down. We prepare students to write the kind of bullshit we are later going to require them to produce to pass our courses.  

Bullshit, according to Frankfurt, primarily involves a lack of interest in the truth. This distinguishes the bullshitter from the liar, who at least cares enough to try to deceive you about what is true. Politicians are generally pretty good bullshitters. They have to be. While many of them may care about the truth, they also care about getting votes. That means they care about making us believe certain things about themselves, and not just certain things about the world. One way to do that is to bullshit. Debates about "building a wall" are largely bullshit. The goal of the debate is not to engage in a sober inquiry about the merits of such a proposal. The goal is to get people to believe you are tough, or empathetic, or honest, or whatever. It's not about a wall. That's bullshit.

I worry that assessments too often encourage the same thing. Students may care about the content of the course, but they also care about their grade. That means they care not just (or maybe not at all) about pursuing an interest or a topic, but also about making those of us grading believe certain things about them. See how smart I am. See how clever. See how much work I put into this. If our assessments encourage that, they are encouraging bullshit in the Frankfurtian, technical sense. They are not about genuine engagement or inquiry. They are about giving a believable performance of a person who is engaged in genuine inquiry. Bullshit.

So how do we eliminate or minimize the amount of bullshit students produce? I don't know, though I have some ideas. I'll leave those for another time. The first step is recognizing it as a problem. When grades are determined by our assessment of required student performances--tests, essays, presentations, etc.--we are inviting students to say or do what they need to in order to get us to believe certain things about them. We're inviting them to be politicians. We're asking for bullshit. I'd like to think we can do better than that.

A Collo contract...

One complaint I hear not infrequently about Collo concerns the distribution requirement for hours. I think this is a legitimate complaint. The idea behind the requirements is to nudge you into doing a variety of things and to keep you doing something throughout the semester. I still think those are worthy goals. Overall, though, the goal of Collo is to get you to be "consciously honors," and that can be accomplished in ways other than following the prescribed distribution of hours.

So in an effort to increase flexibility, I plan to offer a contract grading option next semester (for non-freshmen). If you choose this option, you will draft a proposal for what you plan to do during the semester to earn credit for Collo. Your plan need not follow the guidelines in the syllabus, though it should accomplish the same broad goals. This might be an opportunity to engage in a more sustained project throughout the semester or to front/backload your hours if you know your schedule will be hectic at a particular time. If I accept your proposal, then you will be graded based on it and the standards you set for yourself.

More details to come, but that's the general idea.
   

What makes a course an honors course?

I've been reading course evaluations* for all of our honors courses from the past few years. I've come across a number of comments where someone says a particular course really felt like an honors course, or was what they thought an honors course should be. I've probably come across a dozen or so such comments and it's been said about a range of courses. I have a sense of what I think an honors course should be, and I know what  NCHC says  an honors course should be. I would like to hear more about what you think an honors course should be.

Other than putting "honors" in the title or making it an 088 section, what is it that makes a course feel most like an honors course to you? Is it the content? Pedagogy? Something else? Or, on the negative side, what makes a course not feel like an honors course?


*It would be really great if more of you actually filled out the evaluations. I don't think any course made it to double digit responses this year. In case it isn't obvious, you completing evaluations is a necessary condition for your evaluations to contribute to decisions about courses and curriculum.