Posh white boys

Posted on 26th January 2015 by NomadWarMachine

Raphael [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/ Raphael_School_of_Athens.jpg

There’s a common assumption that there is a gender bias in STEM subjects in HE, but a recent study released in Science has discovered that this is not  actually the real story, and that actually philosophy is among the five subjects with the fewest women (the others are engineering, computer science, physics, and music composition.) while some STEM subjects have about 50% of PhDs being women.

This does not come as surprising news to me.  As a philosophy undergrad in the 90s it was noticeable that there were no female members of academic staff, and I am used to reading articles with titles like this: ‘Philosophy is for posh, white boys with trust funds’ – why are there so few women?  The Science researchers propose a reason:

We hypothesize that, across the academic spectrum, women are underrepresented in fields whose practitioners believe that raw, innate talent is the main requirement for success, because women are stereotyped as not possessing such talent.

Maybe it is because of the emphasis on analytical thought that so many of the UK Philosophy Departments have, maybe it could learn from (whisper!) the “Continentals”, or even (shudder!) women, or maybe it is something else, but I think that it is a problem.  Jenny Saul agrees, for example arguing that women in philosophy find themselves subjects of implicit bias and stereotype threat. (This might require an institutional login.)

However, if we look at the history of Philosophy then we find that pretty much all of the canonical texts are written by men.  And that means that even those of us who are female and teach still need to use men’s voices to do so for the most part.

This tweet caught my eye earlier:

So true, and so hard to do when all that is available is written by posh white boys.

Raphael [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Posted in #MoocMooc, Critical pedagogy, Philosophy, University | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Along the way, take time to smell the flowers

Posted on 22nd January 2015 by NomadWarMachine
apple blossom from one of the trees in  our garden.

apple blossom from one of the trees in  our garden.

I love gardening, and I am also fond of gardening metaphors.  It’s one of the many things I like about Deleuze and Guattari’s metaphor (?) of the rhizome and  Dave Cormier’s rhizomatic learning – the botanical themes that run through and produce fruitful (pun intended) images for me to explore.  I was going to link to one of Dave’s blog posts – he has one where he describes explaining something to his son by analogy with his fight against the Japanese Knotweed in his yard, but his blog is down so I’ll link to this instead, where both Dave and I reach for similar metaphors to try and explain what rhizomatic learning is.

 

dandelion from: http://wildplantdatabase.net/imageDetail.asp?imageID=2296

dandelion from: http://wildplantdatabase.net/imageDetail.asp?imageID=2296

In my garden at home I have a constant struggle to keep down the weeds.  Although Maha hates removing the weeds from her garden, I see it as necessary for the greater good.  Some might think that I’m an elitist about plants – but I am really not.  I buy the theory that one person’s weed is another person’s flower, that a weed is just a plant in the wrong place,  all of that can be true.  But in my garden if I do not remove (some of) the weeds my pretty flowers and tasty veg will not be able to thrive.  So I have to remove the pernicious weeds in order that the most pleasing and useful can survive.  (Where I do have problems is in thinning out plants – once my tomato seedlings start to grow I cannot bear to sacrifice any of them, but that’s another story.)

So what is my educational point?  Well, I guess it is something like this.  Teaching and learning is a bit like tending a garden.  We provide a suitable environment (or do the best with the one we find ourselves in), we prepare the ground, plant the seeds and do our best to nurture them as they grow.  We try to stop the weeds from choking them and the slugs from eating them, especially when they are tiny, and we provide some structure for them to grow into.

Deleuze and Guattari use the metaphor of the rhizome as a story (poem? free form jazz performance?) about what knowledge might be like (and Dave and Keith Hamon have done a lot of writing trying to tease this out).  This is a reminder that rhizomes are not always pretty and easy to digest.  They work underground, building their connections and moving in directions that were not anticipated.  They can rear up at any time and in any place and are incredibly hard to eradicate.  That’s the dark underbelly of all of this, and it both gives me hope and makes me afraid.

Fuschias in my garden

Fuschias in my garden

There’s also a phrase I say a lot, at least to myself, that I think one of my sisters used to have on a poster in her bedroom (you know the sort I mean – with cute likkle animals and platitudinous slogans), about taking the time to smell the flowers.  In my head, it’s a reminder to myself that I  need to enjoy my learning journey, and pay attention to voices that are singing different tunes from mine, because they can enrich my thinking in unexpected ways (those unknown unknowns, as you might say).  so at some point during the #moocmooc chat last night, I replied with this:

…and then, a whole conversation ensued, which I have storified here.

Posted in #MoocMooc, #rhizo14, D&G, Learning, Rhizomes | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

Walk this way

Posted on 21st January 2015 by NomadWarMachine

Critical pedagogy, it is suggested, is an approach that shows, rather than tells.  In a similar vein, Wittgenstein tells us don’t think, but look!1

So am I walking the way I want to walk?  Are students really  well advised to watch me and do thus and so? In my head I am competent, erudite, graceful.

But I suspect the reality is more like this:

http://youtu.be/9ZlBUglE6Hc

1. Section 66

 

 

Posted in #MoocMooc, Critical pedagogy, Learning, Teaching, Wittgenstein | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Capitalism and Exclusion

Posted on 20th January 2015 by NomadWarMachine

Once we had leper colonies, places to isolate the diseased and hide them from public view.  They are closed now, in the Western world, and on the whole I doubt many of us would believe that leprosy was a sign both of [God’s] anger and of His grace”1  , and that justified a leper’s total exclusion from society.

But the structures by which to “other” and exclude were never removed, and other categories of outcasts – the vagabond, the criminal, the insane – all take their turn in the Ship of Fools.  Cast adrift from mainstream society, those “not-us” and “not-like-us” are hidden from view, from thought, from care.

And the structures remain. And the attitudes towards those who are not like us persist. And the capitalist machine feeds on the anger, and envy, and greed that it encourages.  And some oppress, and many others are oppressed.

To achieve this end, the oppressors use the banking concept of education in conjunction with a paternalistic social action apparatus, within which the oppressed receive the euphemistic title of “welfare recipients.” They are treated as individual cases, as marginal persons who deviate from the general configuration of a “good, organized, and just” society. The oppressed are regarded as the pathology of the healthy society, which must therefore adjust these “incompetent and lazy” folk to its own patterns by changing their mentality. These marginals need to be “integrated,” “incorporated” into the healthy society that they have “forsaken.”2

Fast forward to 21st century Britain.  The right wing government, no longer satisfied with robbing the poor taxpayer to feed its corporate friends, is creating a new set of pariahs for us to shun – the poor.  We must curtail the welfare state – not because we cannot afford it, but because it does not fit with right wing ideals. Benefit scroungers are robbing upright citizens of their cash – austerity is the fault of the poor, not the fault of those who rule.

The Tories would have us believe that it is necessary for our society to “reform” the sick and the poor so that they no longer rely on “handouts”, to find them work and thus make them full members of society.

But they are already part of us. They are not outsiders, they are not other.  The capitalist state and its party politics are the things in need of reform, and only by transforming our society can we all become beings-for-ourselves.

1. Foucault, Madness and Civilization p6

2. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed p74

Posted in Capitalism, Freire, MOOC | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Capitalism and Freire

Posted on 19th January 2015 by NomadWarMachine

 

Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in “changing the consciousness of the oppressed,  not the situation which oppresses them”; for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated. (Simone de Beauvoir, in Freire).1

I picked up Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed this morning to reread chapter 2 for #moocmooc and, as I read it  was struck by how much it resonated with my feelings about our awful, bullying conservative government and the edicts of the eejits like Gove and the rest of them, trying to turn all of our children into obedient little drones to service the capitalist empire that they and their cronies own.

I came into work this morning ready to rant about capitalism and oppression in this blog post and found that Maha wrote a blog post yesterday about how Freire chimed with her in the context of the Jan 25th revolution in Egypt (and see Michael Weller‘s comment on the post), so I’m not the only one making connections to my own perceptions of our modern society.

Cameron@s recent attitude towards data encryption comes from a concern, I would argue, that the masses revolt against his government’s oppressive austerity.   Another world is possible.  (I found the link to this book by googling, keep meaning to read it.)

1. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p.74

Posted in #MoocMooc, Activism, Freire, MOOC | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

HEA STEM conference 2014

Posted on 12th May 2014 by NomadWarMachine

A couple of weeks ago I attended the HEA STEM conference in Edinburgh.  I was a bit out of my comfort zone for a couple of reasons – first because I’m a philosopher, and STEM scares me a bit, and second because the presentations (I was doing two) were all in a Pecha Kucha format.  Apart from the fact that nobody seems to know how to pronounce these (and thanks to @niall_barr for sourcing this inspirational video for me):

I was also slightly nervous about having to talk in strict time for the first time to slides we’d written such eons ago (the deadline for the slides was about 2 months before the conference – why?) I will say that, as a conference delegate, I’m not hostile to the pecha kucha format.  It does force presenters to keep to their allotted time and to allow for questions and I approve of that (too many folk overrun and I think this is slapdash at best and arrogant at worst).  It’s really not hard to talk for exactly the time one has, no more, no less, and nobody’s words are so precious that they can’t be cut down.  But I do think the conference organisers could have, well, organised things better:

  1. Having to send the final slides so far in advance meant, in effect, that we submitted a fairly bland set of slides.  In the case of both of my presentations, my co-presenters and I were talking about very recent/ongoing experiences.  We didn’t have our conclusions ready at the time of submission, so we had to guess what we were going to want to say.  Sure, we could have limited ourselves to writing a “safe” presentation, but we don’t work like that (who does?).
  2. One of the conference organisers justified using this format to put the emphasis on the performance, not the content.  No, just no.  While I like a slick performance a) that didn’t happen and b) content IS important.
  3. The requirement was for either 20 slides of 20 seconds or 10 slides of 40 seconds. This was fine for us but I heard others wanting a mix of timings to the same overall length.

In the event I only presented once, Sue opted to fly solo for hers as she felt happier not having to fit timings around anyone else.  It wasn’t nearly as bad as we thought it would be, as our sides were general enough and Shazia and I decided not to worry if we were out of sync with them.  Interestingly, though, while Sue hated the format and thought she was awful, Niall and I appreciated the fact thatg she had to keep to her script for once, so there’s that.

So, there’s a part of me that really, really likes other people having to present in a pecha kucha format as it keeps them to time and possibly to script.  However, I think you need to have a good idea about the final content before writing the slides, and that often is not possible, or desirable.

Posted in Conferences | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

#ocTEL week 0: Big and Little Questions

Posted on 29th April 2014 by NomadWarMachine

Another day, another MOOC, this time ocTEL 2014, the MOOC run by ALT.  As ever, I’m just signing up to see what it’s like, and actually wondering whether these low level activities are good for me or whether (probably) I’d be better off going away and doing some independent reading and writing.  However, I’ll spend a few minutes now thinking about the course.

We’re asked to reflect on “big and little questions”:

Q: Can you identify the most important question about TEL that matters to you?

Q: Or alternatively do you have a cluster of issues? Or perhaps you’re ‘just browsing’?

A: I’m just browsing. I’m interested in learning communities, though – always looking for evidence of those.  I’m more interested in what makes good learning than in any particular technology.  I work as a learning technologist, but that’s a job title, not who I am.  I don’t think that using technology should be hard, either for staff or for students, and I’m a little bit interested in why there are barriers to adoption of specific technologies, I guess.

Q: Write down your reflections on this, privately or publicly:

A: Why do I browse?  I guess that, since #rhizo14, I keep looking around to see what makes for successful courses/communities – without expecting to find the answer.  I’m learning what works for me, and that’s a start, at least!

Q: Try and hold these reflections in your mind in the weeks to come – to direct the choices you make about which options to pursue, or as something to revise or refine it in the light of what you learn.

A:  Well, as my students say, obv.  😛

I’ll stick around for a bit – there’s a few familiar faces and that might make up for hating having to read to find out how to engage with the platform.

 

 

Posted in #ocTEL, MOOC | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

BlendKit2014 week 1

Posted on 24th April 2014 by NomadWarMachine

I’ve just realised that I@ve sugned up for another MOOC, this one called: Blendkit2014, becoming a blended designer.  I’m not sure how much time I’ll give to this, it’s not gripping me so far, but here goes…

For the first week we’re set some reading (sigh) but at least it begins with a list of questions for us to think about:

  1. Is it most helpful to think of blended learning as an online enhancement to a face-to-face learning environment, a face-to-face enhancement to an online learning environment, or as something else entirely?
  2. In what ways can blended learning courses be considered the “best of both worlds” (i.e., face-to-face and online)? What could make blended learning the “worst of both worlds?”
  3. As you consider designing a blended learning course, what course components are you open to implementing differently than you have in the past? How will you decide which components will occur online and which will take place face-to-face? How will you manage the relationship between these two modalities?
  4. How often will you meet with students face-to-face? How many hours per week will students be engaged online, and how many hours per week will students meet face-to-face? Is the amount of student time commitment consistent with the total time commitment of comparable courses taught in other modalities (e.g., face-to-face)?

I’m sure, if I engage with this class, that I’ll start to think about this more deeply, but coincidentally I gave a workshop about classroom flipping yesterday, so I have some thoughts.

  1. I think it’s something else entirely.  I very much like Eric Mazur’s comment that our first question to ourselves should be about how  we teach, rather than just what we teach.  I don’t think that trying to bolt on “enhancements” to existing courses is the way forward, I think one needs to sit down with a blank sheet and think about what the desired outcomes are before starting to add content.
  2. I think blended learning could be the best of both worlds if it manages to meet the needs of all groups of users, the worst of all possible worlds when it is badly thought out and different groups (say F2F and distance learners) end up being isolated from each other.  One unusual experience I had of this was when I taught for U Aberdeen.  Normally the tutor would be in a class with most of the tutees, and a few isolated students would join in via VOIP.  Because I lived in Glasgow, I also taught via VOIP.  This led to most of those in the classroom feeling left out as we could not hear them over the phone. Hmmm!
  3. We’re looking at our online and distance provision here at the moment.  I expect to be involved in some way, and I definitely have opinions!
  4. I have no idea/it will depend.

As I was about to publish this I got distracted by social media and saw that Maha has already blogged about this.  More from me later, and no doubt I will also be tweeting with the hashtag #BlendKit2014

 

Posted in Blendkit2014, MOOC | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Lecture notes

Posted on 23rd April 2014 by NomadWarMachine

I gave a workshop today about Flipping Classrooms which I’ll blog about on my other blog.  At one point I paraphrased Eric Mazur saying something like this:

College is a place where a professor’s lecture notes go straight to the students’ lecture notes, without passing through the brains of either.

Well, if you follow that link above you’ll see it’s sometimes attributed to Mark Twain, but it’s probably not by him.  I like it anyway 🙂

Posted in Learning, University | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Moocaholic

Posted on 4th April 2014 by NomadWarMachine

My name is Sarah and I am a MOOCaholic

Only joking, well sort of.

This post has been brewing for a while and it’s been sparked off again by some discussions in our #rhizo14 Facebook group.  I posted a link to one of Martin Weller’s blog posts and the comment that one of his graphs:

shows that if you get to 12+ weeks it’s probably just some bloke in a shack in Arkansas left

This amused me greatly, as we’re just going in to week 12 of this crazy roller coaster experience, and we’re still carrying on.  Anyway, it’s got a few of us thinking about why we sign up for MOOCs and why we drop out from some and there’ll probably be some messy* writing about it at some point.

So – why do I sign up for MOOCs?  Well, initially it was to find out about them and see how they were going to affect HE, and also to sneak a peek at the various platforms that were being used.  I’d sign up, sniff around and probably not interact at all.  And then suddenly, bang!  I got hooked.  I know who to blame.  It’s that Dave and the gang.  I’m loving being part of such an exuberant community, never knowing what we’ll be talking about next but knowing it will engage me.

So that’s why I do MOOCs. I do them because I love finding out new things and meeting new people, and MOOCS are a great way of doing that.  It’s more about the Twitter hashtags and Facebook/G+ conversations for me than the courses themselves, but I’ve finished one other MOOC (FutureEd) since starting #rhizo14 so it is the content as well, to some extent.

Talk to you soon. 🙂

* “messy” is not a derogatory term in #rhizo14

Posted in #rhizo14, MOOC | Tagged , , , | 30 Comments