This show encapsulates what I might be focusing my dissertation on: the ethical decisions faced by media producers, especially "reality" programs.
Lots of experiences have been eye-opening during my PhD journey so far and I have felt intellectually thrilled,
In a nutshell, I am a woman. I have many many other identities as well,
but that identity is most salient to this post. As a woman, I have struggled with
issues surrounding "girlness", competence, strength, femininity, etc. I
was raised with three brothers and grew up an athlete. These two
factors were very powerful in shaping my conceptions of
self. I like my strength, I like my competitiveness, I like my drive, I
like being self-assured.
The class that I took is feminist theory applied to
research and teaching, with an emphasis on studying feminist theory. I think of
myself as a feminist in the "girl power", women can do/be anything they
want camp. I value the spectrum of women and women's identities. Perhaps surprisingly to some people, I
identify with the "other" a lot because of my beliefs and life
choices. I think I'm pretty progressive as things go. But what I am
afraid of is that I also carry with me an awful lot of ingrained
hegemonic ideas and ideals.
Though this class does feel like a "safe" environment, I felt inside of
myself an awareness of how ignorant I am on the feminist spectrum, all things
considered. I have never been formally trained in feminist theory, so
there is a lack of confidence attached to that. Layered on that is an
awareness of how gendered our language and beliefs can be and a
hyper-awareness on my part of saying the "wrong" thing. I fully claim
these as my own issues, they are not ones being pressed upon me by the
professor or the other members of class. However, it makes me
realize that this class is probably going to shake my identity and my
beliefs to the core as the lightbulbs turn on and I find myself being
challenged to see/feel/think different and through others'
perspectives.
Don't get me wrong, I *love* these types of experiences because only by going straight into your fear do you experience the most growth. And I gotta admit, this class makes me feel fear. Not external fear, but internal fear, because I am fully aware of the learning opportunity in front of me. I am excited and grateful to be able to take it on. I am hoping I don't stick my foot in my mouth too many times. I am waiting to meet the "me" I will be in mid-December. I am in for a wild ride...
I've been mulling over the idea of professional development lately. My colleague, Jillian, is putting together a survey to help us construct development/training program in the formats our audience wants to learn. The options were essentially face-to-face, online, or a blended format. So far, so good.
But that question has become a circular thought process for me because I prefer learning face-to-face because I am primarily an auditory/verbal learner yet I work in the online division of the university. My job is helping faculty develop the KSA's (knowledge, skills, and abilities) to be successful in the online environment. So I feel kind of hypocritical at times.
Full disclosure... I had a couple really pitiful attempts at learning online in the previous two decades. My fault entirely. I did not have the level of motivation and self-regulation necessary to be successful. But something else was missing too - the interested "voice" of the instructor. In both cases, I drifted away into oblivion without so much as a "You ok?" from the instructors.
Ok, so I am a social person. I am definitely a relationship-oriented person. If I feel invested and connected in a learning environment I will work my tail off to be successful. In retrospect, what was missing for me both times was a sense of my classmates & instructors as people and as a community of learners.
Today I received an email from one of the instructors who teaches online for Penn State. She said her students felt like they were getting all kinds of personal attention because she sends them notes each week. I could feel her excitement at this sense of community and positive energy. What a great thing! Made me reflect on whether I could be successful in her course.
In all honesty, most of my out-of-class learning occurs online - doing research in the library databases, perusing Google Scholar, Googling everything that happens in life that I am curious about. I am comfortable learning online. I ENJOY learning online. I would not enjoy walking through the library stacks and having to drag around 20 books or photocopying hundreds of trees worth of paper from microfiche.
Yet, I still question whether I could be AS successful if I was in a totally online course because sitting in a room with other people discussing the topic-of-the-day is where I thrive. Would I get the same level of critical thinking online? Would I want to, or be able to, engage my fellow students in conversations to the same degree? I don't know.
What's funny or possibly ironic is that I think I could be a good online instructor. I think as the TEACHER I could build a community, asking thoughtful questions, pushing students to go further in their learning process. Because I love the online environment I feel confident that it would translate successfully to teaching online. So why don't I feel as confident that it would translate to learning online? Round and round and round I go.
So, to answer my colleague Jillian's question, right now I would prefer face-to-face or blended. Though I feel this mental block I have towards learning online is something I need to push through. I think that at some point I will need to challenge myself to give it a try when it really matters - not a course for fun or a practice course because they are too easy to quit. But a real course that matters. That way I might have a built in sense of importance and motivation that could give me the oomph I need to push through. And be successful.
OMG... Sooooooooooo good.
Recipe:
6-8 cups watermelon
1 cup simple sugar syrup or Karo
2-3 tb lemon juice
Put it all in a food processor.
Put it all in an ice cream maker.
Eat it.
I subscribe to PsyBlog, which posts stories about interesting research being done in psychology. So far I have enjoyed every story they have posted and many have made me think. For example, earlier this week they posted a story stating that group norms developed/nurtured in the workplace stifle creativity. You can read the full article here.
Essentially their argument boiled down to the "ares" and "oughts" of organizational dynamics which create energy around people conforming, and conformation is arguably the opposite of creativity. That much makes sense to me logically. Though I can argue back about exceptions and if/then's, essentially I agree that if everyone is acting the same way, behaving the same way and thinking the same way, there will not be as much outside the box, left of center, creative leaps taking place.
But the one essential area that I think was lacking in this article was an acknowledgment or consideration of those of us who are creative thinkers by nature. For example, if I take myself as an example, I can honestly say that I conform on some levels. I seek out workplaces that have similar values as mine and nestle myself in as happy as a clam if they are a good fit. But I also have quite the rebellious, different-minded streak. At my core I want to be different, I want to be my own person. I want to think for myself. And I value my ability to think creatively and get outside the box.
So I would appear to be a contradiction, right? On the one hand seeking out similarly-minded people while making efforts to maintain my individuality. Quite the paradox.
But where I keep circling back to is that the best places I have worked have been ones that made me feel comfortable and confident as part of the team but also gave me enough room to be innovative and think creatively and ask a lot of "why" questions. I think it takes more courage from upper level administration to allow and FOSTER that kind of freedom than to react defensively and force everyone into the same narrow widget-making box.
So, what does that mean? My gut says that group norms themselves are not the problem, it is the KIND of group norms being fostered. And perhaps more importantly, there is a lot of individual-level psychology at play that needs to be considered. Does everyone like the kind of free-thinking creative process that I do? Absolutely not. I know lots of people who would hate working in that environment. So perhaps instead of painting a macro brush across all workplaces and all workers, we should try to figure out what the individuals want/need and find jobs/positions/roles/environments that will allow people to be confident and comfortable at the micro level.
Is that always possible? No. Is that rather idealistic in some ways? Yes. But I have worked in organizations that take this approach very seriously and successfully and I have worked in widget-box organizations. Give me the free thinkers any day. If I've learned nothing else during my four decades on this planet it's that the surest way to make me go crazy or to trigger a very negative rebellious streak in me is to try and pin me down and force me to conform.
So what does all this have to do with group norms and creativity? I want to advocate for organizations to put energy into creating group norms that FOSTER creativity rather than stifle it as well as manage to get things done and successfully produce whatever they are supposed to be producing. Identify the people who float around in the clouds and have the lightning strikes of inspiration. And identify the people who are do-ers and make things happen. And identify the people who can manage personalities successfully. And identify the people who can spot the potential problems. And identify the people who can sustain a project over time. They are all important and necessary. But if innovation, inspiration, and creativity are part of the mission, vision, and values of an organization, you've got to create group norms that make it happen.
A frequent and always interesting topic of conversation amongst my peer group at Penn State is whether or not the Millennial generation really are the super duper digital geniuses depicted by advocates like Michael Wesch. Personally, having witnessed a 3-year-old turn on a computer, load an internet browser, navigate to a website, and start playing games, I'm inclined to believe that the kids coming up through the K-12 ranks today are a lot different, if not far more advanced technically, than those of us from the (gasp) pre-computer days.
But the question that I find intriguing is if they really are different, should we be adapting our teaching to meet the needs of this new breed of learner? If so, how? Some of my classmates and I attempted an experiment that would measure the effectiveness of single and multi modal educational technologies on recognition and recall in an online environment. We had a slew of control variables we wanted to examine, one of which was age (hoping to differentiate between the Millennials & everyone else by demographic lines), "Power User Status" (which differentiated between people's comfort, interest, and actual use of a variety of technologies in everyday life), and multitasking ability.
Because of time constraints (cramming the experiment into the confines of a semester) we could not get a large enough sample to use age as a control variable, however we were able to to look at Power User Status and multitasking ability as well as perception to gain some interesting insights.
In our study, we found that there was a relationship between lesson modality, learning effectiveness and perception. Overall, learners do appear to exhibit better recognition when given a lesson making use of audio+outline (i.e. PowerPoint). However, recall was not significantly impacted by lesson modality. Learners also appear to have more positive (or negative) perceptions of certain learning modalities based on their power user or multitasker level. This is consistent with the speculations of Marathe et al. (2007).
Some analyses in our study displayed an apparent relationship but failed to rise to the level of significance. One example of this was the number of hours online and performance on the lesson. While those spending a higher amount of time online did appear to have a higher preference for multimodal lesson types, their recognition and recall performance wasn’t significantly different from those spending less time online. Power users also followed this trend with those classified as low power users finding the multimodal lessons much easier to follow than the high power users. Again however, high and low power users did not exhibit significantly different performance in recognition or recall.
This apparent disconnect between perception and performance is a very interesting finding for a couple of reasons. First, our expectation was that learners would perform better in the modality for which they have the greatest preference. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it calls into question whether the design of systems based on users’ preferences is necessarily resulting in an educationally superior product.
So, what about those Millennials? If we make the mental leap that Millennials = power users + multitaskers, we might speculate on which technologies and whal kinds of educational environments might be most effective. For example, a technology savvy power user who functions at a high level may perform worse in a rigidly constructed environment because it is restrictive and becomes frustrating for them to use. Conversely, low multitaskers may easily become overwhelmed in certain modality conditions that contain high levels of personalization or multiple modalities at play simultaneously.
The practical implications associated might allow for the design of future systems where personalization could be designed not only to allow the lesson to be customized based on the lesson content but also based on individual characteristics of each learner. This ability to tailor learning to an individual based on preference has exciting and potentially revolutionary implications for the way in which teaching and learning is accomplished in the online classrooms of the future.
For future research, we would like to look at the perception and effectiveness of more "natural" environments of a variety of educational modalities. For example, podcasts that include a variety of auditory cues and more professional production techniques compared to the homegrown podcasts being utilized by many faculty today that feature a lecture-based recording without bells and whistles. Another comparison could be the typical bullet-based PowerPoint lecture versus the currently hyped Presentation Zen type presentation format.
Obviously more work needs to be done on the relationship between learner performance and their classification as technologically savvy. The small sample in our study limited just how thoroughly this relationship could be examined and a follow-up study with a larger sample would allow this area to be better defined. While our study indicated difference in preference among power users and multitaskers, determining if a performance relationship exists would be much more informative in terms of design considerations that promote more effective learning outcomes.
One final item that merits future research consideration is the role that learner type might play in determining the optimal delivery modality. Given that certain learners prefer material to be presented to them in a certain way, visually for instance, it would be interesting to fully assess an individual’s preferred learning style and then determine if their preference is related to their actual performance. Our findings showed that preference and performance were not always compatible as in the case of multitaskers whose preference was for full-text and audio despite their performance being worst in that condition.
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Well, THAT headline sure got my attention. I have been becoming more aware of free-source or open-source educational missions but still find myself asking a laundry list of questions and not feeling closer to an answer.
For example, on the surface I love the idea of making college-level or college-based learning accessible to people who would not normally have access. In some ways, that is how I view the internet now - the world's largest information bank. I no longer use paper phone books or maps or dictionaries or encyclopedias. Why should I? It is all online now and so much more gratifying to a tech-lover like me to Google it than mess with paper stuff.
But, the other side of my brain goes But... But... But... Like, taken to its extreme, if everything becomes accessible online for free, why should students pay to come to our universities anymore? Today's increasingly tech-centered kids are born and raised Googling for information.
It's one thing for a single professor (take open education guru David Wylie, for example, http://davidwiley.org/) to decide to put his course materials online. It's another thing for an entire college to do so. At what point does the lever tip? At what point will brick and mortar universities start to become a thing of the past? Lots of questions shooting through my brain, very few answers.
I have been working with Penn State's online education division, the World Campus, for about a year now and am becoming more and more comfortable with the nuances and differences between teaching on ground and online. Some people say online education is a thing of the future, some say it won't last. I don't have answers for that one either, but I have been impressed with the passion, dedication, and rigor brought by the faculty I have encountered thus far. The online education environment is much different than I imagined and I understand how it is the perfect solution for some learners for a variety of reasons.
But then today I was alerted to the presence of an ENTIRE UNIVERSITY that is free and online and my brain exploded for a moment. What does this mean? What implications does it have for traditional schools... online schools...? Why wouldn't prospective students flock to this option instead of paying tens of thousands of dollars in tuition? Hmmm...
From the little I have gathered to date, it appears that the classes in the free university "use open-source technology, open course materials, e-learning methods and peer-to-peer teaching". Translated in my mind, that means no faculty. So perhaps having faculty or person-powered expertise in subject areas is still an area of need and demand favoring traditional on ground and online universities?
I expect some people could take the open source course materials, read/watch/listen/consume it and learn a lot. Personally, I am not one of those people. I need the interaction. I need to be able to push and pull and tug and mold the information I am learning in the presence of others. It is through this interpersonal contact that I gain the most. So maybe that is something else on ground and online universities can provide? After all, the peer-to-peer teaching advertised in the free university is only as good as the peers who are present.
All in all, though, I think I am open to the idea. My desire for opportunity and access for people outweighs my skepticism at this point. If nothing else, it will be an interesting experiment. Better still, it provides more than what they had before. So, we'll see. We shall see.
PR release about U.N. free online university: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/05/20/UN-announces-first-free-e-university/UPI-74031242856666/
Have you been to a movie lately? If so, was the song "Warrior" by Kid Rock one of the previews?
First, am I the only one surprised he allowed one of his songs to be used in - much less wrote one especially FOR - a National Guard recruitment video? He just seems so anti-establishment to me. It creates an interesting dichotomy in my mind.
Anyway, Warrior is a tough-driving aggressive song. A great choice by the Guard. Heck, makes me want to sign up. And the "subliminal" messages are not subtle.
Actually reminds me a lot of the song used in the intro to The Ultimate Fighter on Spike.
