Author: vibhavnanda

Week 6 — Diversity (cost?) (benefits?)

Diversity of thought, discipline, race, gender, sexuality etc. are extremely cardinal to the progress of a school, company, or any institution. The advantages are well researched and documented in this article. However, as I was reading this article I started to think about some questions (that I don’t have answers to):

  1. Are there any downsides or cons of diversity? (intuition says no)
  2. Do company’s/ institutions loose on talent while trying to meet their diversity quota?
  3. Does the entire concept of having a diversity quota beneficial or  detrimental?
  4. When an institution “markets” its diversity numbers, does that have any psychological implications on the “diverse” individual — maybe self doubt (Do I really deserve to be here or am I just here to meet the diversity criteria?)

 

These are very convoluted questions. I’d appreciate peoples input on what they think.

Passion for Excellence

I never really understood the concept of passion until I found mine — behavioral science. I had never read a book (for fun) in my life until last year; since then I have finished two (which is a big deal for me). Listening to Dan Pink talk about productivity and innovation in 21st century really resonated with my working style. For me, purpose is the most important component, followed by mastery, and then autonomy (purpose > mastery > autonomy). I saw Dan Pinks’ both TED talks and he uses tech companies as examples to prove his point, that intrinsic motivators work better. However, I think in the financial sector, extrinsic motivators would work better (money is what people care about for the most part, so I guess money is their purpose?). I believe the kind of motivators that would work well for the employees depends on the industry and sector. Additionally, as I was listening to the talk, I thought to myself how does Google (because he uses Google as an example) differentiate between its top performers and bottom performers. I did some sleuthing and bonuses was the answer. Based on my findings, I concluded that money finds its way into employee performance evaluation — so eventually money (extrinsic motivator) is the final answer. Then I realized that Google’s bonuses are a “recognition” mechanism not a “motivating” mechanism — there’s a fine difference between the two, but I can’t put my finger on the difference (suggestions welcome).

Anyway, I have rambled enough. Dan Pinks talk has made my head churn. I agree with him because I have witnessed it first hand but I am not sure how the sciences (that Dan talks about) will be implemented in corporations — I guess that is another problem with an inconspicuous answer (just like the candle problem).

Week 4 — How to escape education’s death valley

This TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson was entertaining whilst being informative (about another country/culture) — the best recipe for a great “talk”. However seemingly prudent the speaker might appear to be, I think the contents of the talk don’t reflect his perceived image. As every student necessitates unique learning tools and environment, every country warrants a novel approach to their problems (including education). Denigrating a country’s educational system on the premise of a different country’s educational system, without any regard for the differences, is facetious at best. There are sundry reasons why students drop out of high school, some of them personal and some of them institutional. Shifting the entire burden of drop out rate on institutional flaws doesn’t seem reasonable. Personalizing school for every individual will set expectations with these students that everything will be individualized for them in life and everything will always be “fun” and “interesting” — a pernicious and spurious expectation which in reality is only setting up these individuals for failure either in college or in their job. No ones job is “personalized” to their interests, it is personalized to the company’s interest. There are always going to be fun parts and boring parts to your job. I think students need to be taught how the real world works by an aptly early age, so they are ready for it when they get there. I would even argue that creating superficial environments antithetical to the real world will lead to a different sort of institutional failure down the road, which will have more critical repercussions.

Week 3 — Laptops And Phones In The Classroom: Yea, Nay Or A Third Way?

I am a big advocate of a shared responsibility model in a class room setting where individual students and teachers share equal responsibility of the failure and success of the classroom (including individual success/failure of students). I personally think that utilization of all forms of personal technology should be banned from classrooms (my perception takes its genesis from old school of thinking) simply because surfing the web not only distracts individual students but also distracts their neighbors and this distraction propagates like a ripple effect. Following are more reasons why I think personal technology should be banned from classroom:

  1. According to a study conducted by microsoft, average attention span has reduced to eight seconds, beating goldfish’s attention span of 9 seconds. If unrestricted use of technology is allowed, then the matters would only become worse. Class room is one realm of the life where people do most of their learning, and learning to have better attention spans can be helpful to students in future.
  2. The class room setting is a time for face to face interaction amongst students, usage of technology diminishes this time to almost zero. Additionally, this diminishing social interaction is increasingly generating more anti-social human beings with a skewed perception of social normality.
  3. Excessive use of technology has increased mental health related problems. I think the class room can be the one place where students get a “break” from using technology and increase physical (not virtual) social interaction.
  4. Using phones/laptops, when a teacher is lecturing, for social media or for other entertainment purposes is extremely disrespectful. Condoning such behaviors on a regular basis creates a perception of normality — which is not in accordance with expectations in the industry. Let me share a personal incident: During my internship in summer 2018, some of my fellow interns were using phones during client meetings. After various failed insinuations, the meeting host, out of frustration, explicitly told the interns to put their phones away as this action was disrespectful. A fellow intern responded to this “order” by saying I can multi-task and continued to use their phone. Following this interns lead, some of the other interns continued using laptops/phones — I was appalled by this behavior and the utter disrespect for the client, the company, and the meeting host (higher up) without any signs of remorse. I think this behavior can be ascribed to normalization of technology use in the classroom setting.

Times are changing, so are teaching techniques and learning methodologies. Consequentially, an absolute ban of technology is not pragmatic in todays “modern” class room. Howbeit, I think that using tools to limit the sites a student can access is a reasonable solution to:

  1. The need for students to have access to technology to be successful in a class.
  2. Stop students from using social media, so they don’t distract themselves or their neighbors, for the period of class.
  3. Encourage student interaction

The article cites Jesse Stommels’ quote: “I don’t think the attention of students is actually something teachers can or should control,” and I couldn’t disagree more. Saying that teachers should not take action to make students better human beings is akin to saying that the doctor should not be controlling the patients prescription. The job of the teacher is to teach students class material, teach them something about life, and help them be a better version of themselves. If students are distracted then how is the teacher supposed to do their job? These children are still learning. This is the time when a person with much more life experience than students should navigate them through right and wrong.

 

 

Week 2 / Networked Learning — Critique of “What Baby George Taught Me About Learning”

I love watching TED talks — they provide unparalleled insight into humanity as speakers articulate themselves from personal experiences instead of making a speech from an utopian perspective.  This TED talk was different in that the speaker drew inspiration from his toddler. Dr. Wesch (the speaker) made me question my own interpretation of learning. Throughout the talk he made some excellent points — some I agree with and some I disagree with — and contradicted himself onetime. At one point he condemned academic institutions by quoting inconsequential statistics. Presuming the failure is real, I think the burden of failure should be shared equally by students and administration/faculty.

Dr. Wesch started his talk by mentioning that commonly class rooms are addressed as “fantasy land” and that people believe that the real world exist outside of class rooms. He derided this common belief and tacitly expressed that class rooms should replicate real world environment. I disagree with this tacit insinuation — class rooms are safe spaces created to teach the tools necessary to succeed at life; replicating real world situations and teaching tools at the same time would be futile. He also expressed that the schools have normalized an extremely “narrow view of learning” by defining learning as “dumping information on students.” I think this learning system is apropos to schools as this is the age to attain knowledge and once there is enough data/information/knowledge available to students, they will be better equipped to be more critical. Similarly, all the technical classes require some degree of knowledge before the students can begin adding novelty to their field of study — hence “dumping information” proves to be effective in most of the cases. Dr. Wesch also juxtaposed his toddlers learning with students learning at school, which seemed a far stretch and even slightly farcical to me — there are very scientific reasons as to why toddlers are more resilient to failure and why adults are averse to failure. Another aspect that invalidates the aforementioned juxtaposition is the difference in pressure, stress, time constraint, and the risk associated with the activity — all of which alter human behavior. Towards the end, Dr. Wesch condemns the A-F grading system and claims that he actualized an alternative grading system for one of his classes, but never explained what his system was. According to me the A-F grading system is apt since it fosters competition and competition is the best motivator — demonstrated by the space race. He also expressed that he had fostered a collaborative environment in the same class, where all students helped each other succeed — I don’t think this is reflective of the real world, and hence antithetical to his original purport that class room setting should duplicate the real world. I agree with him when he exclaims that teachers need to be more compassionate and construing.

 

In totality, I really enjoyed the talk and Dr. Wesch’s idea of teaching/learning. Additionally, I think that Dr. Wesch’s ideology can be an inspiration to teachers, all around the world, to better connect with their students.