Author: Nayara Faria

GEDI Post 6: Opening Knowledge at Virginia Tech


Virginia Tech believes that openness is the future of higher education. Openness ensures greater dissemination, inclusiveness, and integrity for the advancement of knowledge and the education of the next generation. 

On January 2019, Virginia Tech Library launched an awesome booklet  that introduces a few of the many open resources you can find in and through the Library. You can download the booklet in this link . 

The first section, “For Scholars,” highlights the wealth of open scholarship in the Library’s collections as well as tools we make available to researchers for writing and publishing open scholarship. The second section, “For Instructors and Students,” focuses on tools and resources specifically aimed at making learning accessible, abundant, and customizable for all. 

These resources, tools, and services, plus a great deal more, can be found on the Library website by visiting lib.vt.edu/open-access and Open@VT, blogs.lt.vt.edu/openvt. Throughout the booklet tools and resources marked in maroon, orange, and grey indicate the following: 

  • Maroon are resources provided by VT. 
  • Orange are tools supported by VT. 
  • Grey are resources created at VT




GEDI Post 5: Inclusive pedagogy, diversity and implicit bias



Inclusive pedagogy deals with creating a supportive and inclusive classroom that ensures all students have equal access to learning, and both professor and student participate in this environment with mutual respect to differences among groups. Inclusive pedagogy is crucial to student’s learning because social identities of both student and teacher have a direct impact on the learning experience. Also, when students feel they socially belong to the academic community, they increase their probabilities of both academic success and well-being.

Creating an inclusive environment in the classroom, involves thinking about six main aspects of your teaching philosophy: content, pedagogy, assessment climate and power (check out more details about this topic in this link).
  • Content: What material have you chosen? In what ways is your curricular design accessible and relevant to your students? Are there any barriers to inclusion?
  • Pedagogy: How are you promoting student engagement in ways that are meaningful and relevant to students?
  • Assessment: How are you asking students to practice and perform what they’re learning? How can we diversify the ways that students demonstrate their growing proficiencies?
  • Climate: In what ways are you creating an atmosphere for learning that is accessible and meaningful for all?
  • Power: How can you craft a learning environment that empowers students and helps to bring attention to or disrupt traditional power dynamics between teacher and student and among students?
Besides these points, I believe it is crucial that we understand the difference between inclusion and diversity. This is important because: a) with inclusion we can be diverse; b) with diversity we might not be inclusive.

Just pay attention in the following images and you will understand what I am talking about:

Exclusion: 


Segregation:



Integration: 


Diversity:


By promoting an inclusive environment, we also can promote a diverse environment in our classroom. Diversity is important because it enhances creativity, encourages the consideration of alternatives even before any interpersonal interaction takes places and it leads to better decision making and problem solving. However, by promoting diversity in our environments, we are also subject to the pyramid of hate:

Source: https://darfurgeno.weebly.com/pyramid-of-hate.html

In this sense, it is crucial that we understand how our hidden brain works (see How 'The Hidden Brain' Does The Thinking For Us for more details) , because we are all subject to implicit bias towards some topics that might prevent us to promote a truly inclusive classroom.

But what is implicit bias?

According to the Ohio State University implicit bias, also known as implicit social cognition, refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner.

I always thought of myself as being conscious, intentional and deliberate about my actions and behavior. I never thought I was a biased person regarding religion, sex or age. However, when I took an implicit association test, I got shocked! Look at my results:
  • Automatic preference for Judaism over Islam.
  • A moderate automatic association for Male with Career and Female with Family.
  • A slight automatic preference for Young people over Old people.
I am only a MS student going for a Ph.D in the next semester. I do not have classroom experience to share regarding how I have been dealing with inclusion, diversity and implicit bias. After reading more these topics, I can say that I have become much humbler about my views and much less certain about myself.

How about you?
  • Have you taken the implicit association test? Did you get shocked with your results?
  • What have you done to promote inclusiveness in your classroom?
  • How do you deal with implicit bias?





Human Factors view on attention and multitasking

Many people see multitasking as a way of increasing efficiency in our daily life. However, multitasking is a thread of degrading performance. This is true specially in the classroom environment.  In simple words, when multitasking we are executing two or more tasks that are not equally important: these are the primary and the secondary tasks.

Let's suppose a common example in the classroom environment:
  • Primary Task: Main task a person is concentrating on: paying attention on a lecture and taking notes
  • Secondary Task: Distraction task which has to be executed in parallel: using the cellphone to text
Perfect execution of two parallel tasks is possible but requires learning and depends on several context factors. Usually, automatic tasks that require no attention can have a good time sharing with more difficult tasks. However, being in a classroom involves controlled tasks that require attention. These type of tasks are considered hard and require more attention and cognitive resources. Learning a new subject , taking notes, paying attention to a conversation and texting back are controlled tasks take can not be automate even with practice.  

In fact, these tasks are considered in nature and therefore, they are harder to execute in parallel than more distinct ones. When tasks are similar, they compete for same abstract cognitive resources. As humans, we have a fixed pool of available resources. In this way, conflicts between tasks occur when more resources are concurrently requested than available. We do not allocate resources evenly between tasks. If a conversation is more interesting than a task, more cognitive resources will be allocated to this task. In this way, a perfect time-sharing is not possible. 

Additionally, most dual tasks require enormous “mental effort”. For instance, if you are trying to learn a difficult subject in class but at the same time you are engaged in a controversial subject with your friends using your cellphone, both tasks require enormous resources. If tasks requirements are greater than your available resources, you start experiencing mental workload. Yes! You can get more exhausted in class by using your cellphone!

What are your thoughts on using cellphones in the classroom vs attention and multitasking? 



GEDI Post 2: Ten years challenge: How did my learning process changed?

If you are a social media user, you have noticed that in the last weeks many people are posting then-and-now profile pictures: the ten years challenge. Even though many might believe that this is a movement created by Facebook to train their facial recognition algorithm, I think it is a nice opportunity for me to reflect what changed in my learning process in the last ten years.

Before College... 
I got my first computer in 2011 during my first semester in college. Up to that time, learning for me was basically an offline process. At my high school, we did not have PowerPoint classes. If we were lucky, maybe in one of our classes the professor could show some pictures in this old projector. It was the closest thing to PowerPoint that we had:



Old Projector 
Because we did not have PowerPoint classes, some professors did an effort to give us some handouts so that we did not have to copy too much from the black board. However, the handouts were not photocopied. Does anyone remember this machine?
What is the name of this machine? 


We did not have books for every class. Even the classes we did had books for, most of them were borrowed from our school. Therefore, we needed to copy in our notebooks most of the subject taught in class.

Some part of our grade was based in our notebook. We did not have smartphones to take pictures of the board that we would never look at. In fact, we had to practice handwriting a lot. At some extent I believe that this process made me a better writer as I was able to learn a lot of the subject because I needed to read it as I wrote it . Last semester at Virginia Tech I remember one of my classmates complaining to the professor that we should have extra time during exams, because handwriting was a slow process, and everybody was used to write using their computers.
Schools did not have electronic resources
Project Cover: written by hand



I had more opportunities for "hands- on" learning. This is an example of a biology homework we used to do at school. 

Example of a biology homework 


Do not get me wrong! We had internet on 2011. However, not everybody had easy access to the internet and the school did not have computers in any of the classroom. I remember we had to be really creative for presenting projects. Nowadays, I am used doing a nice PowerPoint presentation for any type of project presentation. Not too long ago, we used to create songs, dance, perform or find new creative ways to present something.

The most common way of presenting projects besides PowerPoints

I have made so many cardboard TV's to present project's and homework:

Cardboard TV example

This book collection was my google up to year 2010 or so:

Barsa Collection

In college ... 
When I went to college, everything drastically changed. I went to a good private school and so, they had many resources that I was not used to. It took me a while to get used to the "PowerPoint class idea". Even though my whole life I was exposed to the traditional lecture-oriented classroom, the lack of technologies forced us to find creative ways to engage students. In college, learning became quite boring. The creative ways were always based on "showing videos" or "PowerPoint presentations". I had to learn basic rules to write academic documents. I did not even know what a citation was. It was a difficult change and I had to start taking computer classes and start accepting more about the idea behind computer programming. However, not everything was more difficult came with hardship. Doing homework and projects became an easier process. Google reduced immensely the time I spent looking for references.

However, I feel that I learnt more how to Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. Because I did not have to handwrite anything, I could only scan read most of my references. In fact, in less time, I had more information (But, do students really read the references? ). Also, I basically did not need a notebook for school as I was used to do my whole life!

Exchange Program  ... 
In 2014 I came to the US in an exchange program and I started learning English. The way that I understand learning drastically changed. I had came in contact with many technologies, and I started to get to know basic tools that could make my learning experience more interesting. Also, there were so many games in the classroom that the same subject I learned in Brazil taught me something different.

From this phase of my life, the most important thing that happened to me was learning English. Up to that point, everything that I knew was taught to me in Portuguese. In this sense, my references were limited to my language. There were many important things related to my major that I could not find in Portuguese. For the first time in my life, I had no limit to things I could learn. In English I could find just about anything I wanted. Also, I started to realize how manipulative the news I was getting in my country were.

Now  ... 
Nowadays I am surrounded by far too much information. I am connected to many social media and I spend a lot of time keeping up with them. There are times that I feel I should delete some, but even my school duties here in US obligate me to keep them. Not too long ago, I did not have a smartphone and now I have trouble focusing in the classroom without getting distracted by other things on my phone. I still feel like I am behind on the understanding of some technologies that are common in the US but not in my country. I have access to many resources, but I do not fully know how to effectively incorporate them in my daily learning life.



How about you? What has changed in the last ten years?

GDEI Post 1: Networked Learning

From this week readings and videos, my favorite one is the TedTalk "What Baby George Taught Me About Learning" by Dr. Wesch who is an anthropologist and professor that received the “US Professor of the Year” Award from the Carnegie Foundation. In this talk, Dr. Wesch share his perspective about education built from his experience in the classroom.

Resultado de imagem para Dr. WeschAccording to him, there is a sense of disconnection among students. They do not feel like they know their teachers. In fact, Dr. Wesch argues that digital technology on the global society don’t automatically foster significant learning or establish genuine empathy or meaningful bonds between professors and students. From his experience, he argues that only genuine connections may restore the sense of joy and curiosity that we hope to instill in his students.

From my experience in the classroom, we are defined by our grades. Professors don't connect or understand what are our personal trials that might be preventing us to perform as desired in the classroom. Basically, we just do stuff to "get it done". But, are we really learning something? This grading system is basically working as a sorting machine, in which "As" and "Fs" are defined. In this system, As" and "Bs" start to feel complacent and stop trying and "Fs" are just out. What if, professors start giving a "not yet" and feedback to students? In the same way that babies need to fall so that they learn how to walk, students have to feel that failing is part of the learning system, and that there is someone that cares about them in the learning process.

Extra Blog Post 7: Donate to the First Virginia Tech Latinx Symposium

Support El Centro of Virginia Tech to raise $5,000 for the First Virginia Tech Latinx Symposium.

This symposium serves the Latinx student population, interested faculty, administrators, and students who want to know more about the Latinx academic experience. As Virginia Tech Works to increase the Latinx student population, The latinx organizations feels that increasing visibility, providing a forum for Latinx scholarship, and sharing pedagogical strategies for faculty who work with Latinx students will make this a valuable project.

Latinx individuals currently make up 5.5% population, this conference presents the university with the opportunity for positive publicity within the Latinx community in the region.

Click here to donate!





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Extra Blog Post 6: Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy at Virginia Tech


The Inn At Virginia Tech & Skelton Conference Center will host from January 31 - February 1, 2019 the 11th Annual Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy. This conference showcases the best pedagogical practice and research in higher education today. Sessions address disciplinary and interdisciplinary instructional strategies, outcomes, and research. 

Early Bird Registration Ends January 15th and Virginia Tech Students pay $50.

To register, click here.
To get to know more about the event, click here.
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Extra Blog Post 5: Affirmative Action



Affirmative action is one episode from the Patriot Act series of Netflix presented by Hasan Minhaj. Patriot Act is a new weekly comedy series from Netflix that explores the modern cultural and political landscape with depth and sincerity. In the affirmative action episode, Hasan breaks down the history of affirmative action, its impact on his experience with the modern education system, and how a recent lawsuit against Harvard that could go to the Supreme Court could change it forever.

This is definitely an episode that you should watch. Let me know what you think! 


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Extra Blog Post 4: Mass media does not help us out of the intellectual minority


In this blog post I will argue that the mass media does not help us out of the intellectual minority. To get out of the intellectual minority it is required the effort to think for yourselves, that is, to be free. For the understanding nothing is required but freedom. So if man is not free, he can not be autonomous and independent. The mass media does not provide thought for itself and, holding back control over information, it extinguished the freedom of individual thought. In this way, the mass media does not help us out of the intellectual minority.

The mass media are energy networks that transmit information, (mass culture, internet and telecommunications). They are known as media, and are extremely important in building social life in contemporary society. Scientific and technological development culminated the emergence of networks that connect the world. These networks have long ceased to be just entertainment spaces; today, these communication media have their essence in the information, and have obtained an undeniable power of force with the society. It is not by chance that they are called as the fourth power. This is a way of saying that after the executive, legislative and judiciary, the media would be the fourth highest instance of power in the nation.

With the technological development, transmissions have become more efficient, especially through the use of satellites. With globalization, such media contributed to distribute in the world the way of thinking of great holders of media power. After all, the media is always controlling large economic or state groups, keeping the viewer in the position of passive information agent, often without even being aware of it.

Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), in his book "Cultural Industry: Enlightenment as a Mystification of the Masses", asserts that the goal of mass "media" is not to produce critical thinkers, on the contrary, the intention is to reproduce the values ​​and ideologies of social groups that manipulate the messages, influencing habits, expressions and customs of the present time. These productions are always well accepted by the general public who, without objection or analysis, always reproduce these same ideas, replacing the consciousness of the people with a uniformity, thus reducing the frequency and probability of the formation of autonomous, independent individuals capable of judging and make decisions consciously.

In Brazil, this phenomenon can be identified in the enormous influence that television networks (Globo, Band, SBT, Record) have on the customs, values, and way of life of the Brazilian citizen. Especially when the function of social media is to "bombard" people's minds with useless and alienating information with unnecessary occupations. Whoever controls information is not the receiver but the transmitter, which in turn has ideological and financial interests, because it is linked to economic groups that move billions of dollars a year in the production of programs, advertisements and films, turning communication into a business.

According to Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), in his text "Answer to the question: What is 'Enlightenment'?" Enlightenment is a process of intellectual emancipation, overcoming ignorance and laziness to think for oneself. It is the quest for autonomy, for the majority; is the effort to get out of the minority and for this you need to have the boldness to make use of your own understanding. Thus, for him, the concept of autonomy is directly linked to the capacity for self-determination to which every rational subject is capable. That is, to be master of his actions, his actions, of himself, of not being determined by any external interest to his will while thinking and acting autonomously.

Now, only through enlightenment can man become more human and therefore emancipated, freer. If the aim of the mass media is to control / coordinate information, soon those same means of communication will not lead the human being to enlightenment, they will not help us out of the minority, because this clarification presupposes intellectual freedom. Thus, the mass media destroy individual personality, enlightened reasoning and lead the human being to continue in the smallness of the intellectual minority.

For you, how does mass media affect intellectual minority? What is the effect of mass media on our students nowadays ? Do you think  students have lost their critical thinking due to mass media?


Sources:
[1] KANT Immanuel. “Resposta à pergunta: Que é ‘esclarecimento’?” (Aufklärung). In. Textos Seletos. Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes, 2005, p.63-71.
[2] https://direitoufma2010.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/a-industria-cultural.pdf


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Extra Blog Post 3: Laziness Does Not Exist, But unseen barriers do.

The article written by Devon Price, Nonbinary Social Psychologist & Writer in Chicago, talks about the complex paradox of laziness in higher education. She is a psychology professor since 2012, and according to her she has witnessed many students procrastinating on assignments, papers, skipping presentation , letting due dates fly by, graduate students missing deadlines for applications or taking months to revise a simple dissertation draft or paper draft. The most interesting thing in her article is that she argues that she NEVER thought that laziness was ever at fault. In fact, she argues that she does not believe that laziness exists at all. 

Resultado de imagem para lazinessInstead, she argues when she sees students being "lazy" she ask herself: What are the situational factors holding this student back? What needs are currently not being met? What are the barriers to action that I can’t see? For her, barriers always exist and it is important that professors see those barriers an recognize them as legitimate. This is the first step to break "lazy" behavior patterns. In fact, professors should respond to a person's "lazy" behavior with curiosity and not judgment. This is important because when you do not fully understand a person's context, it’s easy to impose abstract, rigid expectations on its behavior. She says: "If a person’s behavior doesn’t make sense to you, it is because you are missing a part of their context. It’s that simple".

In the academic context, she says that most of the time laziness is a synonym for procrastination. But for her, laziness is anything but procrastination. People blame procrastinators for their behavior. Even procrastinators blame themselves for being "lazy" . " You’re supposed to be doing something, and you’re not doing it — that’s a moral failure right? That means you’re weak-willed, unmotivated, and lazy, doesn’t it?" For her, procrastination  is more likely when the task is meaningful and the individual cares about doing it well. For her, professors should look for what is holding the procrastinator back. They need to understand student's barriers. Is it anxiety? What is person's context? For her, educators are not taught to reflect on what their students’ unseen barriers are.
And, since most professors are people who succeeded academically with ease, they have trouble taking the perspective of someone with executive functioning struggles, sensory overloads, depression, self-harm histories, addictions, or eating disorders.

What do you think about this topic? Does laziness exist for you? 

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