my brain your brain

The January issue of Technology and Learning provides a brief summary of Daniel H. Pink's A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. (You can listen to Pink discuss the book here.)

The book's premise isn't new (students of the digital age are increasingly required to develop their creative skills to meet life and work challenges). But I'm finding it interesting in light of reading I've been doing about preparing engineers for their professions.

Pink's et al. argument follows something like this: As computing becomes more ubiquitous, left-brain tasks become less important than right-brain tasks. As the need to perform the tasks diminish, certain left-brain skills and knowledge (math, logic, linear reasoning, etc.) atrophy. Filling the gap are right-brain skills and knowledge, such as art, creativity, and abstract reasoning.

What complicates this for me is the gray spaces around engineering practices as design arts, technical communication as craft, and development and deployment as science. It seems that we would be doing students and certain disciplines a terrible disservice by privileging right-brain activities over left-brain activities in the classroom. Removing the human element from the programmatic or linear processes of design and development undercuts the engineer's roles as inventor, designer, tester, etc. We essentially remove the the engineer from equation and dismiss a tremendous of instructional theory.

Maybe that's an exaggeration. But it just feels sticky to me. There's something awfully stereotypical about left-brain/right-brain discussions in that they generalize human activity into clean categories. Too clean for me.

johnny can't write - again and again

Not exactly, but it's the same old industry perspective - this time in the context of evaluation. A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education states that standardized and other forms of testing are not effective measures of a graduate's skills. It's the term "skills" that I find interesting here. The article states that employers thought, in general, new graduates need to improve in areas of global knowledge, self-direction, and writing.

I know there's a long-running debate within Composition and Technical communication about what exactly it is we're teaching students in the classroom (art, analysis, critical thinking, mechanical skill, etc.), but when I look at the three areas of improvement, I'm thinking "one of these is not like the others."

From an instructional perspective, I know that global knowledge and self-direction can be taught in a multitude of ways within a writing course. But how does one go about evaluating that knowledge? The CHE article dismisses multiple choice as inappropriate ("this isn't a multiple choice world"), but identifies project portfolios and essays as some of the most useful tools in assessing a potential candidate. So if the emphasis is on the textual (yes, I'm privileging the textual here), could poor writing "skills" mask a graduate's knowledge on any subject (let alone an ability to self-direct)? What I'm getting at is, if candidate evaluations are primarily based on textual artifacts, should we not be emphasizing the effective authoring and management of those artifacts? Should we not be teaching students the specific mechanical skills they need to author the documents and essays they will use to transition into professional roles?

I've muddied my own thinking here, I know. But there is some nugget here that has to do with where we spend our time in the writing classroom, and what we're asking our students to consider as both academics and pre-professionals.

it's a leadership thing

What is it about working in higher ed that bugs me so much? Is it how, at every turn, I'm bumping into people that have the business acumen of a rock? No, I met plenty of them through 15 or so years of real work. Could it be my daily frustration with an institutional decision-making mentality that awards sloth-like movement toward anything closely resembling a command decision? No, even the slowest moving of decisions are decisions nonetheless and should be embraced by those of us who act on action. I think what bugs me the most is how people in decision-making positions presume to make their problems your problems. And it's not that the turn is unique to higher ed. What is unique is the atmosphere in which the turn is made; the attitude of presumption and air of importance which demands (not commands) your immediate and utmost attention.

Look, I've spent an entire career making other people's problems my own. Solve the problems in a timely and cost-effective manner, and you improve your value to the organization. Do that time and again and you're in damn good stead with the principles. Here in the world of "let's play business like we know what we're talking about," the way in which the problem transaction goes down is, quite honestly, starting to disgust me. The God-damn presumption that I could give a rat's ass about some project that was cluster-fucked from the start is down-right maddening and just this side of demeaning. The move to lay that turd project and my desk and demand answers -- a demand for accountability in an environment where accountability is as understood as quality, cost, and value. Holy crap is all I can say.

I'm having too many of these days lately to feel focused - to feel like I'm continuing to make the organization a better place for students, staff, and faculty. I'm starting to recall some of Anita's warnings about the pitfalls of working in higher ed -- about the non-business nature of the business. I'm starting to miss the real work of the real world. Really.

its a part-time thing

So there's this front-page article in the paper today about the how public universities are exploiting part-time and adjunct faculty. Stop the presses! Holy crap people... We all know about higher Dd's dirty little secret - that wasn't what drew my attention. No, I was more intrigued by the article's claim that students are somehow instructionally short-changed because part-time instructors and adjuncts have life commitments that get in the way of the real business of education.

So what is it that gets compromised when an adjunct is teaching 4 classes at one school and three classes at some other school one hour down the Thruway? The argument assumes that full-time/tenured faculty provide a better product to students in their sections. The argument also assumes that the value of the part-timers is not what they bring into the classroom, but what they leave out because they're busting their collective ass to get from one campus to another.

It's a complicated labor issue. It's a complicated ethical issue. What's not complicated is the fact that 9 times out of 10, the adjunct is bringing life-experience into the classroom -- experience that translates into practical, skills-based instruction, which prepares students for life beyond the academy. I realize, of course, that I'm focused on technical communication instruction. I'm thinking about the discussions I've had with program chairs in the schools in which I teach... about how full-time faculty with Ph.D.s or graduate degrees in English, textual studies, and Composition prove woefully inadequate in the tech com classroom... about how these full-time faculty struggle to contextualize the design and development environments in which their students will some day write.

On top of the issues of exploitation, cheap labor, and limited opportunities, let's heap on a healthy dose of failing to recognize the value of life work.

hold me now

The organization is doing a terrible job of capacity planning. We're in the midst of a mission shift and something of a functional reorganization. People who have been here for 900 years don't seem to be too concerned with the fact that projects are getting backed up, staff are stressed, and critical work is performed in a vacuum. I keep thinking about Nowhere Man in the Yellow Submarines cartoon, sitting in the middle of continually shrinking concentric circles until he's the only object left in a vast white space, spinning aimlessly in a sea of nothing.

For the past few years I've strove to create an intimate relationship between Information Systems and the functional units of the college. We've done a good job of managing projects against tangible metrics and degrees of accountability -- not something easily done in higher education. Maybe it's just been a stressful week and I'm needing to vent. Maybe I miss the demands, deadlines, challenges, and successes of good 'ol capitalistic private sector exploitation. Maybe just once I'd like to see some accountability for inadequate executive planning. Maybe I need to wait until the kids finish college before I start barking about the blind eye continually turned from the business of higher education.

content layers

In reading Collin's comments about the good, bad, and nasty of presentations (particularly PowerPoint), I scrambled to recover an online course "content model" that Coach and I developed about two years ago. I'm still looking for the document. Our basic premise was that an online course consists of layers of content -- visual, texual, aural, and whatever can be imagined in an online environment. The nature of this content and how it emerges as instructional knowledge is dependent on how the course is designed, pedagogical decisions, technologies used, the learners involved, etc. The model broke down when we moved to the point of evaulation -- determining how effective or useful content is at its multiple layers. We kept bumping into the subjectivity of visual evalution.

What I find interesting in Collin's comments about Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Amazon) is that the author supposes a general sense of what makes for a good and bad presentation -- a sort of universal heuristic that can be applied to informational presentations. So I'm wondering, can such a heuristic be used as a baseline for evaluating content in an online course? Like presentations online courses are collections of visual, oral, and verbal elements. And like bad presentations that we're forced to suffer through, poorly constructed online content is typically a combination of elements dropped into a platform template with little thought to structure, purpose, context, etc.

It may be less a univeral heuristic than it is an understanding of common sensibilities -- an emphasis on simplicity, clarity, and elegance. Oh, but there is so much (mis)interpretive possibility in those three words.

I hope to have some time to recover the content model. It may actually help me with a few questions I posed to Louise and Carol about disciplinary definitions of content.

here we go again again

Louise has been incredibly patient with me on the second half of the major exam. I'm praying her patience does not run out.

Question 2
Technical Communication and Composition both emphasize initiating students into disciplinary practices. Writing course curricula outcomes is one place where these emphases are often articulated. Beginning with a hypothetical (or sample) set of upper-division writing course outcome statements as a framework, how does Composition and Technical scholarship advocate appropriate curricula and pedagogical approaches to prepare students for disciplinary practices? What similarities, differences, and tensions exist among these approaches? What are the various claims about what students should be able to do upon graduation? It will be necessary to locate specific scholars and arguments within this range of claims. How are arguments advocating writing instruction in non-textual areas, such as visual rhetoric and technology skills, shaping disciplinary practice debates in Composition and Technical Communication?

here we go again

Thought I'd commit this to the ether to get it jump started. A revision is completed and being used as the basis for an outline, but here in all its convoluted beauty is the basic structure of the first part of my major qualifying exam:

Question 1
Service writing curricula are found in institution-wide general education courses, writing courses required in addition to general education courses for pre-professional students (four-year non-arts and sciences degrees), and other specialized pre-professional writing courses, such as technical writing. Within this range of locations and conceptions, how does Composition and Technical Communication scholarship advocate appropriate approaches to writing instruction in the service course? What are the differences, similarities, and tensions among different advocates and approaches to service writing instruction? How do Composition and Technical Communication distinguish between lower-division and upper-division (or advanced) service courses in relation to institutional, disciplinary, and professional requirements?

hustle

This weekend I will move forward on the exams. Classes start on Monday. The engineers will begin meeting on Thursday. This semester we're in the cramped lab in CST. It's always better than the Kruger room in the basement of Link. JCC kicks off a week later.

Interesting projects coming up. A Long-term Care online course for care providers will include a substantial amount of video and scenario-based instruction. There is some opportunity to be creative with learner-driven instruction and remediation looping. The HR-related project I mentioned before could provide similar design challenges. That course is relatively small and self-contained. My initial thinking is a basic HTML structure with some Flash and JavaScript elements. We've been using a lot of Captivate and CourseBuilder with the heavy procedural instruction. I'd like to try to work some of those elements into the courses that are less skill-based.

Took the plunge and ordered the Adobe Technical Communication suite. I'm certain it'll make a range of documentation and helpset projects easier to manager and produce.

go with your gut

I'm designing and developing an online course for hiring managers at a local company. While working through the source material, I came across this advice:

Avoid common rating errors. Seventy percent of Hiring Managers make a decision on a candidate within the first 3 minutes of meeting them. Review candidate’s information and your notes against the job description and performance competencies. Communicate feedback to interview team and Hiring Manager. Make the best decision based on evidence - It’s more than a gut feeling.

The contrast to Tom's post about Malcom Gladwell's Blink is interesting. There's the obvious business and professional considerations. I'm also thinking about classrooms -- resident and online (I do hate the term virtual classroom). As instructors, facilitators, teachers, etc., we're asked to be objective, to evaluate based on the student's intellectual activities in and about the subject matter.

I begin to develop a visual and intellectual portrait of the student from the first email or post. It's just what happens, whether I listen to the voice or not. I've used ice breaker exercises to minimize any wary conclusions I might draw from tone, style, or grammatical problems, but the sketch is drawn anyway.

In online courses, I need to function more like the hiring manager -- shutting out that little voice telling me X about a particular student -- waiting until I have a chance to fill in the details of the sketch. And yet there's a degree of pragmatism in what Gladwell concludes. I've been the hiring manager and instructor making the blink decision. While Gladwell might classify a hiring situation or a student evaluation as an "easy situation" (as opposed to what he considers "a complex" situation), I'm not comfortable toggling between gut reactions and working through a body of information before making a decision.

All human interaction shapes a response. What we do with that response is maybe what I'm responding to.

webs and maps

Derek has a useful metaphor developed about certain strands in his application of Derrida and Brand. I haven’t looked at Derrida in almost two years, and know less about Brand’s work. But Derek’s use of language and imagery help him create a cogent treatment.

I’m revisiting some old notes in an attempt to restart my qualifying exams. I came across a thread I had been following (through Hardt and Reich) into a space in which technical communicators learn to see their subjects not as collections of discretely compartmentalized units, but as “webs” of interrelated and overlapping elements – as cognitive maps giving topological shape to subjects. This is what brought to mind Derek’s work.

In The Geopolitical Aesthetic, Frederic Jameson describes cognitive maps as simplified structures and categories that people adopt to navigate and understand the vast surroundings and relationships in which they find themselves enmeshed.

“Cognitive maps as representations of our ideology (our [mis]understanding of our material and economic conditions). Our ideology naturally involves simplification because our material and economic conditions are beyond complete recognition. Like geographic features, our beliefs, understandings, ideas, prejudices, and blind spots navigate us.”

Implications for technical communicators: We have to rethink what is meant by analysis and interpretation. In common practice, much of our analysis and interpretation is structured, linear, and rule-bound procedure. For the modern technical communicator – the informationist -- analysis and interpretation means throwing out rules and seeing what understanding and possibilities emerge that were not visible before (extreme design/development methodologies?). As informationists, we have the purpose to look beyond preconceptions of how systems work and imagine new representations of the spaces in which they operate.

data head

Infobits reports that MIT has developed a browser-based search interface into video recordings of lectures and seminars. The key feature (I think) is that the video resources are being indexed using speech recognition technology. The software is "trained" to understand accents using transcriptions of recorded speech. Not a new voice-to-text approach, but interesting in that "recorded" speech is being used.

I'm wondering a little about the accuracy of the searches, particularly in regard to differentiating web searching from data mining. Granted, the context in which the search tool will be used likely shaped the principle methods by which searches are completed. If the software "runs" like a typical search engine, it may be prone to a common problem with search-enabled collections of data: Even after optimization (within the search utility and modifications to the data), search algorithms break down as the size of the data collection grows. I'd also like to explore how the tool accounts for the relationship among search terms or phrases. Is there an accommodation for moving from broad search phrases to more narrow and specific terms (as most of us have been trained to do using common web search tools)?

Again, there is obvious application here for improving online learning experiences. The possibility of incorporating a knowledge path that moves from the textual elements of a course to a dynamic, voice-enabled search interface, which then presents learner-selected information aurally and visually... moving back from the lecture to a synchronous environment in which learners discuss their presentations, verbally and textually.

Fan Note: You don't have to be from New Jersey to like what Ray Rice did last Saturday.

anticipation

Tomorrow is a great day. See Reason One. Reason Two: H. and I are celebrating our birthdays (they're three days apart). The boys and I love ice cream cake. H. isn't a big fan, but she is an ice cream fanatic - go figure.

If all goes well tomorrow, RU will win it's second bowl in three consecutive bowl-eligible years (1, 2 and 3). My birthday present is a day of limited distraction/interruption from 12:00 to approximately 2:30 p.m. H.'s present is an afternoon of shopping with some gift certificates she received for Christmas. D. is working until early afternoon and S. has already lined up his always full weekend social calendar. We'll reconvene tomorrow night for diner and ice cream cake. And all will be perfect in the universe. My optimism runneth over, and no one likes a cocky fan.

it's about the bandwagon

I'm reading a lot of posts and pages this time of year with the common theme of resolution making and goal setting.

Tom Johnson has a funny post about why people fail to achieve their goals. Beth and friends provide a few interesting writerly perspectives on goals and goal setting. And Derek writes a thoughtful (and unknowingly motivational) passage about achieving multiple goals without losing focus.

My decision to make a New Year's resolution for 2008 went something like this:

"Honey, how are doing with your exams? You haven't talked about them in a while."

"Exams... yeah. Hey, do you think the kids would like that sea food stew we have leftover from Christmas?"

With that exchange (and a critical mass of resolutions hitting full stride at week's end), I've resolved to finish my quals and move onto the next chapter. Work will always be busy. The kids will always need something. The house will always need patching. There's always something, so the excuses are endless and wearing incredibly thin.

moving targets

Another quick turn-around project... a project without a definable scope - no parameters, just a vague idea of what somebody thinks somebody else wants.

I had a cocky, pain-in-neck CE student a few years ago. He liked to question everything, which is exactly what students should be doing - that's not what made him a pain. He was lazy, didn't do his work, and slacked miserably on his collaborative project. One day in class we were reviewing documentation methodologies and some basic aspects of systems design (you know, the whole needs analysis/requirements gathering thing before you start really doing anything). Somewhere in the middle of the discussion, Wise Guy says, "We really don't need to know this stuff. Agile development is now. We just do it. We don't waste time with documenting requirements, we just do it."

My reply to Wise Guy's outburst included something about the need to know what you're doing before you just do it. I noted that one of the problems I encountered with Agile development (in my case it was a software development company that had adopted extreme programming) is that it assumes the client is willing to and is capable of making modifications to the design on the fly, at the point of unit testing. In my particular case, this assumption carried a tremendous amount of overhead for the development staff. When the client proved to be unwilling to be an active participant in the development of their product (I gave you money, now you give me what I paid for), the development staff had no documentation to fall back on - no record of analysis, nothing that clearly identified for anyone what problem was going to be solved and how best to solve it.

It sometimes seems like business in academia is conducted like Agile development. I'm still struggling with this 6 years in.

trying to be helpful

For about ten years, I’ve been maintaining the documentation suite for a set of niche market applications. The docs consistent of a set of user guides, quick start brochures, and help sets. A few years ago we made a decision to develop the online help using JavaHelp. I’ve recently been working to move the help to PDF using links from the application modules to named destinations in the PDF versions of the user guides. I am aware that an online user guide is not a help file. In fact, online guides are woefully unhelpful when it comes to resolve point-of-problem inquiries into an application’s knowledge base.

I’m attempting to justify a business decision that I know will compromise the usability of help files. The move to PDF-based help is driven by the costs of converting a FrameMaker-based documentation suite to JavaHelp, and the need to have the help sets ship with each release of the applications. Arguments about single-sourcing aside, the quickest way to generate the help sets will be to update the PDFs named destinations with the application’s help call map IDs. I’ve not convinced myself that I feel good about this decision.

I loved watching Michigan beat Florida today. I like Tebow, but Michigan has a better fight song. It was classic college football. A plethora of SEC wide-open passing and good ‘ol Big 10 ½ punch you in the mouth running. Saturday my Scarlet Knights look to make it two bowl victories in row. When’s the last time Dome fans could say that?