Fun Stuff

This is satiric commentary on the futile effort of universities to transform themselves into mere credentialing processes for career training, which is currently being turned into "outcomes based" accreditation for universities in the States so as to, essentially, debase them into a purely credentialing enterprise. The degree to which administrators greet demolishing the university into the rubble of credentialing with unreserved glee is, needless to say, alarming.

Abstract

The plodding rate of change within higher education make it ill-suited to anticipate challenges rapidly looming in government and corporate sectors. This prospectus outlines those challenges and describes a bold solution. If implemented, it would signal a less hidebound, more adroit institution of higher education to better serve students, business, and society, while fostering a new future for higher education.

This essay was prompted by a rhetorical question by my brilliant former (and forever missed) colleague Andy Piker, "what would Socrates have said about Student Learning Outcomes?" An excellent question, I thought, and one I hope "The Agora" helps to answer. The answer is nuanced in a way I like to imagine Andy would have approved.

Abstract

Student Learning Outcomes are increasingly de rigueur in U.S. higher education. Usually defined as statements of what students will be able to measurably demonstrate upon completing a course or program, proponents argue that they are essential to objective assessment and quality assurance. Critics contend that Student Learning Outcomes are a misguided attempt to apply corporate quality-enhancement schemes to higher education. It is not clear whether faculty should embrace or reject Student Learning Outcomes. With sincere apologies to Plato, this dialogue explores arguments for and against their use.

My attempts to harness information resources in service of teaching began as a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst teaching an online-only section of Medical Ethics using a now thoroughly antiquated version of WebCT, which is now little more than legacy code from a legacy company. Interestingly, I believe this was the very first online offering by the philosophy department at UMass-Amherst.

One of the reasons I was hired on tenure track at A&M-Corpus Christi was to teach their core's capstone course, Professional Ethics, which was required of every student graduating from the university. A novel course which coupled philosopher-led lectures with discussion sections broken out by discipline and led by discipline faculty, the team of 8 or 10 faculty would meet regularly to discuss how to improve the delivery of the course. Eventually these discussions centered on finding some way for students across disciplines to engage one another discussing moral dilemmas and cases. My tenure application ended up including hundreds of pages of Perl scripts I developed and modified from open sources to set up early versions of asynchronous, peer-reviewed, and peer-scored discussion boards, all of which was to the delight of some and the dismay of others. It was an early experiment devoted to developing online spaces for students to continue discussions from large lectures. This was, of course, years before the development and ultimate failure of so-called MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), but it incorporated similar elements which were nevertheless tethered to carefully wrought large (300+) lectures.

Changes to the core curriculum and the at best dismissive, at worst disdainful attitude of faculty in other colleges to the very idea of teaching ethics ultimately led to the demise of the Professional Ethics capstone course. Furthermore, it became clear to me that no online or even hybrid course can compete with nearly any in-person class--"nearly any", I say, because there are always horror stories emerging from the dispassionate, powerpoint-clinging professoriate. Naturally, students like online courses, but they are candid about why: online courses are easy, as they must be for disengaged students to pass them, and students cheerfully report learning little or nothing taking them. Administrators can talk about "casting the educational net widely", but turning residential colleges and universities into a dorm-room confined online experience forsakes education for, again, mere credentialing, thereby leaching from it any intrinsic value. It is not possible to 'speedrun' an education, but students are regularly speedrunning online courses and degrees with glee.

Abstract

Should the Humanities embrace Open Source software? In this paper I explain the concept of Open Source Software and argue for its use in the Humanities by presenting a case study of improved functionality in the code used to implement asynchronous and anonymous online moral discussions.

During my masters degree in philosophy at the University of Kansas the Division of Continuing Education sought help developing a much-needed study guide to help students in Introduction to Logic. The faculty offered the job to me for a healthy stipend, and I brought my remarkable, quirky colleague Keith Coleman in to help me write the study guide. Though pursuing a PhD in philosophy, Keith was much more a biologist. His apartment was given over to aquarium tanks filled with an almost complete collection of carnivorous plants, along with snakes and reptiles of varying degrees of rarity. He spent his weekend nights diligently recording and documenting the calls of frogs and toads. Given the subsequent catastrophic demise of many of those species, I have often wondered what happened to Keith's extraordinary tapes.

Abstract

A study-guide to accompany Copi and Cohen's Introduction to Logic, written under contract with the University of Kansas Division of Continuing Education and the University of Kansas Press.