Where Are the Faculty Leaders for Digital Humanities?

A colleague recently sent me a link to a New York Times article, Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches by Patricia Cohen.


In the article Cohen describes how the new world of data is leading to studies and research in the world of humanities that just were not possible in the past such digitally mapping Civil War battlefields to determine topography‘s role or “using databases of thousands of jam sessions to track how musical collaborations influenced jazz”.

The article is not a list of hitherto unquantifiable potentialities; it asks the question of purpose and value of the information being obtained.

The article is yet further reinforcement that even technophobic or techno-agnostic educators must shift their positions to provide guidance to our digital native students. Even though technology is not their field, this means that educators must continually educate themselves in the both what kinds of technology are available to their students and how to use them. It means that my colleagues can ill afford to spend their time only on their disciplines but must now consider technology usage to be as much a part of their disciplines as is using the library. It means that technology, particularly office and web 2.0 applications, must play a role in classroom sessions.

Another colleague once told me that technology tools are best when they work right and remain in the background. Cohen’s article helps to show that viewing technology through this lens may be shortchanging our students regardless the discipline.

What’s In a Campus Edition?

Why do companies marketing to educators and students love to name their products campus edition? I suppose that the name is intended to make us see that they are creating something specifically for us. However, what exactly are they creating? The term does not seem to refer to the same set of things each time.

Most of my colleagues are familiar with the WebCT Campus Edition and Blackboard Campus Edition learning management systems. These LMS versions are being steadily morphed into Blackboard 9. At some point there will be no online Blackboard campus using the term campus edition. However, based on how frequently the term is used, I do not think there will be any shortage of products or services that do use the term.

An example is Mozilla Firefox Campus Edition 2.0.0.6, a student-centered variant of the Firefox browser that added two components, an iTunes control called FoxyTunes and a research manager called Zotero.

Wimba’s Campus Edition product is called Genuine Genie. It is designed to allow presumably a teacher or college professor to convert easily Microsoft Word documents into web pages. Added features will also allow interactivity to be built into the web pages. The web pages can be loaded into LMS courses. This product is a somewhat schizophrenic and has several permutations of its name/brand: Genuine Genie, Course Genie 2.0, and a version contained in Lectora (another name of prevalence).

One of the latest campus editions to hit the streets is by PBworks, formerly PBwiki. The shift from wiki to works signals that PBworks is expanding its business model. Unlike its basic free account PBworks Campus Edition provides unlimited premium workspaces for $799/year. The premium version offers centralized control, centralized account creation, centralized monitoring of accounts, branding of the PBworks accounts, and easy site administration. A planned add-on will be plagiarism tools. In effect, PBworks is nudging more into the realm of the LMS.

Whether or not PBworks is successful remains to be seen. In the present economy, the low cost is certainly in their favor. If past trends continue, one sure thing is that Campus Edition will not be the final name of their product and they will not be the last to call their product campus edition.

Is Voice Better than Text?

I recently read about Nuance Communication’s Dragon Dictation app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Nuance has created this app version of its remarkable Dragon Naturally Speaking software which allows you to speak into a microphone while Dragon types the text for you. Distance learning professionals have loved Dragon Naturally Speaking and comparable software for years. Many distance learning professionals will also gravitate toward to Dragon Dictation app which adds greater mobility to their ability to work at a distance. (This app is currently free in the US and Canada but if it becomes popular the cost will undoubtedly rise.)


Other Voice to Text Technologies

Of course, Dragon Naturally Speaking has not been the only technology to transcribe voice to text. Microsoft has long built this capability into its operating systems. However, it has not been something that they have marketed as value added, perhaps because it has been woefully inferior to Dragon until recently. Although Dragon Naturally speaking is still in my opinion the best, Microsoft has recently put some pretty good speech recognition software in Windows 7. It starts up easily and works a million times better than their previous versions although Dragon is still better.

Problems

With the app and speech recognition, professionals have gained powerful new tools to help them conduct distance learning courses which are largely text-based. However, does the use of the tools translate into better courses or better service to the students? From my own experiences the answer seems mixed.

One problem is over-reliance on the software. Dragon boasts that it is 99% accurate—and it is amazingly accurate—but there are drawbacks. Dragon learns to recognize your individual speech patterns as you use it and that takes time for the accuracy to get really good. Even so it makes mistakes and herein is a significant difficulty. You need to proof-read your own text from Dragon which is tough for lengthy passages where Dragon got 99% of it right but there are hidden sections that Dragon bobbled but with real words.

Years ago when I first installed Dragon I felt liberated from my slow typing speed. Now I could “type” at the speed of thought. For my online students this meant that I could answer their questions with more detailed, more nuanced answers. In actuality, many of my answers because less succinct. The reading involved in an online class already takes a good deal of time. Long instructor passages take even more time. Lengthy answers from instructors can confuse those who are not strong readers.

It has been my experience and I have heard from others that there is a fair amount of mental processing while typing with the keyboard. For most people, speech may happen to rapidly for this to occur. Speech is also perceived as relatively informal, a fact which we easily tolerate when speaking to someone, but becomes written speech significantly increases the expectation that there will be a more formal structure to the content and that more thought will be embodied in the construction of the content.

Why transcribe at all?

Sometimes I wonder why we bother transcribing at all. Would it not be better if we are speaking anyway to simply record the lecture and post the audio? This would help to students who may have some kinds of learning disabilities. This could help students who have differences in learning styles. This would enable students to listen to the content while mobile such as on an iPod or other mp3 device, which fits with the busy way our world works now.

Some of my colleagues argue that making the text available to students is important still to promote textual literacy, that it is still important for students to master written communication. Yet the same colleagues do not know what to make of the current texting phenomenon, which has students producing more text-based communications than ever.

Perhaps programs like Dragon and the new Dragon app could make a huge impact if adopted for texting. In fact, it could help us solve some of the issues we are fighting in education such as sentences in all lower-case with no punctuation and myriad acronyms. Teens, and all of us, could type as fast as the thoughts occur. This would remove the need for large QWERTY keyboards on phones. The question is would it be adopted because again we do not understand why texting is so popular. When we do we will be able to address the educational problems and move more decisively toward changes in the way students learn and the way we provide them information online.

Central Falls Implications for Community Colleges

In February 74 teachers and 19 staff members were fired by the superintendent at an underperforming Central Falls High School in Rhode Island. The decision has received a good deal of media attention and a significant amount of praise around the country. (Even President Obama has publically agreed with the measure as a move toward greater accountability in education.) While it is too true that the school has been a consistent underperformer, in the national media the story is mischaracterized. In reality it is, of course, not a story of callous teachers who do not bother to do their jobs or care about their students. The school was filled with professional teachers who worked very hard to help their students achieve. It was also not about a school that was making zero progress. The school’s test scores had improved over the last two years although to be fair the increases were slight. It was not that the teachers were unwilling to change the structure of the high school program. Structural changes such as moving from a comprehensive high school to one with upper and lower divisions had already been approved. In the end the unresolved issues that caused the superintendent to make the radical move seemed to be more about the requirement for teachers to work harder and longer for what their union regarded as inadequate extra pay.

This apparent national confusion about the reason the teachers were fired has implications for those of us in higher education. The problem is about the teachers accepting changes to their employment without what they believe to be fair pay. The perception is that they do not accept performance measures and are failing in their jobs

We, the community colleges, share a stronger bond with our high school educator colleagues than most traditional 4 year colleges. We must educate an increasingly greater percentage of the high school graduates and returning nontraditional students in order to keep the country globally competitive. Furthermore, we have been more willing to build programs that do more than provide a good liberal arts foundation but rather increasingly provide direct job skills which may even more lead to industry-style standards of measurement of performance. After all, a sizeable proportion of our students are looking not to transfer and certainly not just enlightenment, but rather for transferable and marketable skills. It seems manifest that at some point there will be a greater demand for us to be held accountable for our students’ performance.

I know that all my colleagues, faculty and administrators, in college are dedicated professionals who care about their students and their student’s futures. However, once the kinds of standards that have stabbed dagger-like into the status quo of compulsory public school have been imposed on community colleges, how will we fair? The answer is likely split. Some parts of our colleges, such as our nursing and technology components, are accustomed to performance measures. Both born out of public necessity and applauded by local government and industry for their ability to improve each region, the programs were initially structured in a way that performance measure is part of their infrastructure. While it has strong ties to our colleges’ liberal arts tradition, distance learning, due to its continued scrutiny and foundation in technology, seems more readily accepting of performance measures. Other more traditional parts of our colleges, those that are more focused on a traditional view of the liberal arts college (not necessarily traditional in the community college sense) will undoubtedly have more difficulty adjusting.

Performance measures and our acceptance of them cannot solve a Central Falls kind of problem. The performance measures are only a way to provide the institution with data. The way that the institution interprets the data and the proposed solutions form the locus of problems. Without knowing many more of the details of the Central Falls superintendent’s proposal than I have outlined here, it is difficult for me to say how fair the proposed changes were to the teachers or if the union should have accepted them. Knowing our mandate to provide college opportunities to all, if our colleges’ data showed we had a similar problem, I am not sure that dedicating more faculty time to the problem would help us. I also cannot imagine college deans and presidents taking such extreme measures to achieve what will likely be only marginal increases in overall college achievement. Until we arrive at that place in time it is not clear how we should respond. Unfortunately, the right time to contemplate the issue for community colleges is when the problem does not yet exist. The right time is now.

Helping Students Understand Plagiarism

Two of my esteemed colleagues, Pamela Carroll and Peter Patsouris, presented to the academic division on Friday. The topic was plagiarism. The exercise involved dividing those in attendance into relatively random groups and providing them with case studies. The case students contained detailed accounts with shadings of suspected plagiarism in each. This outstanding exercise revealed to us that we have no detailed consistent policy  for handling such cases, that there are three different ways that we are handling plagiarism, that we each see the offending students in different lights, and that the stakes vary depending on the course and/or program of study.


Our exercises did not address distance learning but since this is my niche at the college, I began to think how cheating online generally plays out. Our courses, which are the standard heavily text-based variety, require students to post answers in text to a discussion board, assessment or assignment. Our online student, feeling the pressure of deadlines, work and family obligations, and perhaps the additional pressure of educational developmental weaknesses, take a short cut by copying, pasting and failing to attribute. Typically, the online student is given a zero and not allowed to make up the score. The student also is usually admonished and reminded of the stated policy for academic honesty in the syllabus. Then if this was not the final exam we move forward, assuming that the matter is settled. But is it? Did we just make the point, or perhaps a better question, did we teach the student anything about the consequences of cheating?

Our students in particular come from differing backgrounds with differing attitudes about how to get ahead in life. They have been exposed to images and events in the media and politics that suggest that cheating works if you are clever enough about it. I don’t know that you change this kind of perception by exacting even the heaviest penalty, failure of the course or dismissal from the program. It may even be somewhat unfair to some of our students who may not be articulate enough to explain their rationale to us, the educators. Because of the way we work online, it may be even more impersonal and the student again may be learning nothing about personal integrity and honesty.

Perhaps in the past at the college level we have not been traditionally in the role of instilling culture as our high schools colleagues but the growing enrollments and a growing concern with the practice of teaching at the college level is perhaps signaling that change is nigh. Maybe it will be some sort of stepped approach aided by a software application—I don’t have the answer—but I do believe that we need to develop methodology for moving a student down the path of academic honesty and ensuring that they understand that it is foundational to many other aspects of successful adult life.

Prep Pandemic Classes Online

Another large storm moved up the east coast threatening to bury every town in its wake with snow this past week. This after a storm that crippled the mid-Atlantic states with feet of snow the weekend before. The first storm missed Connecticut when it turned out to sea but the forecasts predicted that on Wednesday we would not be so lucky. In preparation colleges, schools, and businesses announced their closures as early as a day before. Parking bans were put into effect. Those businesses that did open Wednesday morning closed early. The governor worked with major employers to stagger employee releases so that the highways were not clogged and that everyone had the opportunity to get home safely. However, the storm on Wednesday was seen by many as a bust as most of our towns received only a few inches of snow, which prompted many of us to wonder if all of efforts were warranted.

It reminds me of the issue we faced with preparing our colleges for the H1N1 flu. Last summer in our institutions there was a great deal of discussion about contingency plans in the event that many of our students suddenly were not able to come to classes. Although there are other good reasons that should provide impetus to have solid contingency planning, primarily, we were attempting to prepare for a potential H1N1 outbreak. We did not want to have our students severely set back in their educational goals by losing a semester. We dealt with the pieces of the problem we thought needed to be addressed in our prep work. We discussed probable numbers of classes that could be affected. We looked at the numbers of faculty and staff members that could be affected. We developed updated our contingency plans for moving course content online in a short period. We developed training workshops to prepare our faculty to conduct at least part of their classes in Blackboard. We attempted to work affectively to convince our staffs and faculty that the planning was worth the extra energy.

Although the year is not complete it appears to be far enough along that much like the storm that missed, H1N1 appears to have missed us this academic year too. Some are saying that their extra effort was in vain or that their lack of effort to prepare was justified. Some suggest that the man-hours of all the intelligent, educated professionals could have been better invested resolving some of the numerous issues facing our colleges.

In general I feel that prep-time is never wasted. In this case, we should like at the larger picture. Preparing for H1N1 has improved the technical knowledge of our faculty. Preparing for H1N1 has forced us to make sure that we are contractually and technologically ready to handle larger numbers of students online. Preparing for H1N1 has given us a better contingency plan that we can use regardless the cause that students are not able to come to the physical campus. Over the last couple of years schools and colleges in Connecticut have closed due to regional electrical power failures, water main breaks, grieving of tragic happenings, investigations into health of conditions, and violent events. For the most part we have been able to cope reasonably well when bad things happen but the work that we have done has prepared us for the worst.

Social Media & Preemptive IT Security

In an episode of 2006’s the Masters of Science Fiction television series, called “Watchbird,” flying devices similar to our Predator drones (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs) are programmed with an algorithm that allows them to detect the intent of the an assailant. By doing so, the drones can act preemptively. As long as the Watchbirds were only being deployed away from our shores, everyone lauded their performance. When they were brought home to fight domestic crime, of course, things went awry.

Preemption is always a tricky business that harms innocents and dirties the hands of those who are placed in charge of its deployment, whether the dilemma is war or criminal justice. Now in our colleges we are somewhat unconsciously bringing the concept to education by imposing preemptive information technology security on many of our computer systems and restricting the use of those systems.

On the one hand, we have those who believe that security online must trump everything we do or attempt to do online. Regulations from federal (FERPA) and state laws are frequently interpreted in ways that seem to suggest that we need tight control of online security. On the other, we have those who like me believe that social media, open source software, email, and other Internet tools are so valuable that the occasional difficulties we suffer are simply the cost of doing business in the Information Age. Obviously, we need to comply with all laws but I remind my colleagues that these laws were not created recently and thus not with technologies in mind. Just as obviously, a system that prevents the use of social media, blocks the downloading of Internet materials, restricts the use of email to internal official business, locks out non educational web sites, allows only established database access, and allows only a small amount of designated users is extremely secure. This kind of locked-down system, however, fails us by ignoring our mission, educating our students. If we are not using all the relevant tools at our disposal to educate our students then we are failing our society and undoing hundreds of years worth of progress in education. When we know that our society demands a better educated workforce, when we know that this means educating young and old as well as extending the education of many already in the workforce, how can we in good faith think so preemptively? If we continue down this path, of course, things will go awry.

Linked Data fo the Future of Student Research

I encourage everyone to view Hans Rosling’s amazing presentations, this one showing his new insights into world poverty and life made in Monterey, California in 2007. His worked exemplifies the kinds for presentations that should be available to everyone via the web if Tim Berners-Lee’s Linked Data becomes a reality. Currently, you can find all sorts of data on the web but information you can use is not so readily available. His idea is that everything, not just the conventional web pages, should have an address. For example, there should be a page containing data about you as an individual not just your pictures, games, and random thoughts but real data with statistics. This could contain the places you have lived, your credentials, work progress, earnings, family information, etc. but further those individual pieces of information should be available with or without information about you. Being able to disaggregate this data from your page allows anyone to create on the web or from the web information about the average credentials of people in your state, how people of your ethnicity move through jobs, etc.

The implications for educators are that we can our students get useful data on the web. Perhaps without subscriptions to specialized databases our students can get relevant, accurate, and reputable data. Perhaps we then shift from discouraging research on the web general to teaching our students how to select the most appropriate data for their work.

Currently, Linked data has a PR problem. Berners-Lee who is always visionary is not always the best candidate to express his own vision. He has expressed the concept at several venues over the last couple of years but so few organizations and individuals understand and have embraced the concept. Berners-Lee stated that his employer ignored his idea for hypertext markup language. We cannot afford to miss what he is saying now.