I hear you on not wanting to teach! It can present a difficult cycle for grad students, having to TA as your research wasn’t developed enough yet to land a full RA, then not being able to develop your research because all your time is spent TA’ing. It seems the really fun part of academia is the mentoring, all the excitement of watching a mind grow plus that tangible progress towards deliverables.
Author: jschlittepi
Comment on Bring real-world problems into assessments by jschlittepi
This is a tricky thing to juggle as a doctoral student! Your knowledge may be useless without skills in implementation, yet your ability to graduate will be limited by a disinterest in theory. Per feedback, how do you feel about zero sum grading programs such as at Cornell and William and Mary?
Comment on learning matters more than success by jschlittepi
I think it’s tricky to reference the college dropout as teachable examples, just as taking the singular habits of outstanding people raises its own issues. Given sufficient knowledge and presentability for one’s field, most anyone could quit. A notable case of this may be found within the visual arts, where formal the good a university pedigree may hold, a solid portfolio could get be just as useful for a fraction of the price.
Comment on Are grades problematic? The grade polemic? by jschlittepi
You make some interesting points on the utility of learning for a grade. If one was to view a student teacher relationship as contractual in a way, especially for university students, I can really see wanting to know before the course exactly what will be taught and how it would be evaluated.
Comment on Grades: An Oppressive System In Education by jschlittepi
Thanks for the post Ashley! I have a really good friend who was advised not to go to MIT. Right now he’s doing a post doc somewhere ridiculously prestigious, so glad neither of you took that advice!
Comment on Distracted enough without adding more by jschlittepi
Really interesting read on the google glass. I’m curious if there’s simpler methods than banning phones outright, given the potential phones can play for safety and socialization. As most carriers still do not offer affordable unlimited data plans, perhaps session control on school wifi could apply sufficient pressure to disincentivize cellphone use without disabling their more important functions.
For one positive outcome, nobody abuses collect calls anymore:
“Hello, you have a call from ‘PLZ PICK ME UP NOW MOM KTHNXBAI,’ do you accept?”
Comment on New aged learning, the death of a master by jschlittepi
Interesting take on the Star Wars analogy. This theme was super strong in the new one. They never outright stated it, but if you read between the lines the old bad guys were a pretty pale shadow of their own reputations and those that came before them. Naturally it tied into the hero’s journey approach, but it was interesting to see the masters-to-be-defeated being a little less Emperor Palpatine and a lot more Wizard of Oz.
It’s pretty fitting when applied to the present, there’s enough crisis of the day which the knowledge and systems of the past are comically ill prepared to solve. Seems a better time than ever to foster that rebellious spirit?
Comment on Looking at the story from a different point of view…or…. a useful Model! by jschlittepi
That’s a pretty cool approach to try to satisfy learner’s needs! I’m curious if they had their minds set on the acronym character before they fleshed it out. Still, I remember most of my classmates’ complaints against a course over time having to do with a failure to address one of these goals.
Comment on Against humanity as we know it……no laptops in my classroom! by jschlittepi
As one unable to organize or retain paper notes and deeply beholden to the google ecosystem, I would be greatly saddened by such a requirement. I had the great pleasure of taking classes with one particularly cohesive cohort of public health students. For every single exam in each class, the students would make a single google sheet summarizing all of the expected content, lecture notes. The data fields on these docs were tailored exactly to the spec of the professors’ study guides, statements made in class, and the format of previous assignments. A fair bit of moneyball occurred as all students studied directly to the test. However, this enabled every student to study in their own way, as many worked in groups or transcribed to flashcards. While students may have suffered some breadth of knowledge due to studying exactly to the test, they greatly benefited from both quantity and accuracy of knowledge due to the collaborative cross validation. Had laptops been forbidden, this coordination could never have occurred, and the cohort would have suffered lower grades and competency for it.
Comment on Using “I” and the vulnerability of opening up by jschlittepi
I concur with you on the fear of public reception! Bad things can and will happen as shown here: https://www.aaup.org/news/targeted-online-harassment-faculty
Hiding is bad, but charging foolhardily into the fray may also limit one’s long-term options.
I figure it’s best to make a public persona that’s easy to find, interesting enough to follow, yet difficult to criticize ~ aka linkedin. It’s a dark, dark rabbit hole of salesmen liking each other’s plans to actualize synergy and whatnot.
