Techfoot

How to Read My Comments on Your Paper Drafts:

Every once in a while I read about some educational practice that makes such perfect sense I can can’t help but wonder why everyone isn’t doing it. Steve Greenlaw periodically directs posts in his blog specifically to his students. In a recent post he addresses the purpose of the writing students are doing in his freshman seminar.

“Writing is the tool most scholars use to think about ideas. You don’t write when you have your ideas figured out; rather, you write to figure out what you think. Writing, revising and rewriting is what scholars do. Completing the first draft of a paper is the beginning of your thinking; it shouldn’t be the end.”

When I read drafts, I try to read them as I would a colleague’s paper who is asking for help in improving their work. What that means is I’m not pointing out what’s “wrong” with the paper. Rather, I’m making suggestions about what isn’t clear to the reader, or what I think might make the paper stronger.

I had to contrast Steve’s message to his students with the one we’re sending to our graduate students. We’re in the midst of the comps season, and my colleagues and I are dutifully preparing questions for the two days of exams that will determine whether the students that we’ve spent the last couple of years (or more) working and learning with should be allowed to begin their dissertations. As I look at the fascinating questions my colleagues have prepared, two thoughts immediately pop into my mind.

First, I thank the design of the universe that I’m not being expected to answer them. The thought of having to enter a room with a computer and no notes and synthesize two years of thinking, reading and writing about leadership or planning or policy–much less all of them together–would be terrifying. (It might be interesting if we had a qualifying exam for those who are reading the comps–just a half-day in which we are expected to synthesize all the research in our fields since we took our last closed-book comprehensive exam. It might make it even harder to find readers than it is now.)

The second thought is to try to find some rational reason for subjecting students to this experience. Once they’ve jumped through this hoop, is there any professional situation where they would be expected to do this again? Comps were the most worthless step in my own doctorate–largely because the key research in the field suggested that the only thing timed exams measured was the the ability to take timed examinations.

As I understand Steve’s message to his students, he’s telling them that it’s worth learning the conversation that shapes professional writing because it will be at the core of their education. I can’t help but wonder what message our graduate students are getting from us through the comps requirement.

Learning 2.0 – Main

This program came to my attention through a brand new blog that I’ve just added to my aggregator. (Welcome to the blogosphere, Charlotte!) The project was designed to introduce members of the staff at the Public Library Charlotte and Mecklenburg County in North Carolina. PLCMC Staff members who completed all 23 activities–ranging from starting their own blogs, setting up a bloglines RSS reader and exploring Flickr mashups–received an MP3 player. (Looks like over 117 have completed the tasks and earned their MP3 players so far and over 300 have started blogs–as required by Activity #3.)

The 23 activities are distributed over 9 weeks, and each activity includes a brief overview–generally with a podcast and some text, some “discovery resources” and a specific discovery exercise. Typical explorations include:

• #18 Web-based Apps: There not just for desktops
• #17 Playing around with PBWiki
• #20 You too can YouTube
• #19 Discovering Web 2.0 tools

Activity #2 provides an overview of 71/2 Habits for Self-Directed Learners.

I wonder how many W&M folks would take the challenge to participate in a similar exercise?

Mark Federman is posting an interesting series of reflections as part of a PhD seminar on “The Political Economy of Adult Education.” The reflections are in response to a paper written by Ian Baptiste and Tom Hearney titled The Political Construction of Adult Education. The paper provides a fascinating dialogue in which Baptiste and Heaney respond to a series of questions about the nature of the adult education. Baptist is Professor in Charge of the Adult Education Program at Penn State and Heaney is head of the adult education doctoral program at National Louis University.

The questions are far reaching:

1. Do you refer to yourself as “an adult educator”?
2. What are the distinctive practices, institutions, organizations, purposes and predecessors of the enterprise you call adult education?
3. Increasingly “adult learning” is being substituted for “adult education.” What do you make of this substitution?
4. If can be reasonably argued that the enterprise you described above will continue, whether or not the label “adult education” remains. Provide a rationale for continued use of the label or propose a more desirable alternative.

There’s lots in both the original paper and in Federman’s reflections that bear on some of the questions that we are addressing in various ways in this class.