Month: February 2016

What part of the Circle are you Staring at?

Being Inclusive in the academia. This is a very important and sensitive topic. I’d like to start with an idea, that’s greatly heard of, but not always applied. Once upon a time there were two circles. The two circles had unique aspects to them, and the two circles also had similarities. When trying to coexist with one another, they had a terrible time whenever they kept exploiting their differences.  However, once they began looking at their similarities, they realized they overlapped. There was this lovely space where both of them were comfortable, and they felt at home. This space was the overlapping space of their circles. This overlapping space is similar to the similarities found between any two humans. They could focus on their differences, or a lot better, focus on their similarities and coexist peacefully.

In the modern day, everyone is supposed to have equal rights. However, as Shankar Vedantam mentioned in the interview with NPR titled “How ‘The Hidden Brain’ Does The Thinking For Us“, he mentions how many people have preset biases that form, even in 3 year-olds. These preset biases don’t allow the world to be fair, and don’t allow people equal opportunities if and only if they take their biases to the next level. In other words, if someone acts on their biases, the outcome usually isn’t too great. At the same time, if an environment is diverse, inclusive, includes both genders– the company is more successful, and makes more revenue as mentioned here. That is huge, that diversity can do such wonderful things for a company, and increase it’s revenue.

In thinking about being inclusive, there are many people who stand out and don’t always face the warmest environment. People face profiling due to their skin color, religion, age, race, and many more. Some of this, I strongly believe has a strong association with the media. The media plays a huge role in creating biases and judgement towards races. They can totally portray people in a way that lacks reality. Unfortunately, human nature is that people are generally afraid of what they don’t know or don’t understand. So many times, people may be afraid of others even more because the media said something bad about it. However, this doesn’t end except through awareness. Awareness and the spread of intellect is the way to get people to be more inclusive and welcoming to differences.

The most inclusive environment in America is the academia. It is more inclusive than the real world, and more inclusive than industry. The academia isn’t perfect, but it’s better than what the world has to carry. And the better the academia becomes, the more there will be hope for the real world and other institutions that are not academic.

To be more inclusive in the academia and in the real world we must respect our differences. We must not shed excessive light on these differences. Instead, we should respect the differences. We should always look for what we have in common with others, rather than what’s different (or what we aren’t comfortable with). When we do that, we will be facilitating a more inclusive environment. We will look for similarities, and a peaceful life– rather than focus on differences which could lead to conflict.

So are you focusing on where the circles overlap?!

 

Week 7: Everything I learned about inclusivity, I learned from Uncle Sam

This week’s readings on inclusivity in the class room and hidden biases made me think about my time in the Navy. Much like the university setting the Navy brings together people from all walks of life. All races, all genders, all sexualities and all religions were represented in the Navy. From day one we were taking good ol’ boys from Alabama and black kids from Detroit and saying that not only are you going to sleep in the rack above this guy, but you are going shower with him, eat with him, work with him and depend upon him doing his job to keep you alive when things get bad. The situation that these young men and women were put in seemed unlikely to work– people from such different backgrounds obviously couldn’t come together to create a cohesive team, and yet overwhelmingly the Navy has been successful in bringing people together.

I think Uncle Sam has developed some skills which might be applicable in the college classroom.

  1. There is ongoing training that sailors are exposed to on dealing with people from a different background. Whether that is a sailor of a different race gender or sexuality, the Navy gives lots and lots of training about the importance of inclusivity.
  2. There is a clear point to the training and inclusive behavior. Sailors learned that hidden biases or bigoted behavior made them less safe, affected the quality of their work and the work of their shipmates, and created an environment where the Navy couldn’t fully take advantage of everyone’s strengths and talents. Nobody was expected to do participate in these programs just for the sake of doing them.
  3. Finally, I think that sailors were given a new identity that became more important that their backgrounds. We became sailors, we became members of a specific community, we joined a 200 year old fraternity of men and women. I think the esprit de corps that developed, helped people not discount the differences between themselves but realize that the similarities were more important.
The Navy like the University is certainly not perfect and there is a lot of work left to do in creating more inclusive communities. But whether it is giving students more training, letting them know the practical benefits of the training, or creating a Hokie identity that unites all of our students, the lessons created to keep men and women safe at sea can be used to keep our community safe in Blacksburg.

 

Blog Post 5: Ethics and Professionalism

I thought the readings this week were all very interesting and thought provoking. Specifically the UNC scandal involving “paper classes”. Reading the report on how UNC student athletes were put into classes that were academically not sound to boost their GPAs, is such an obvious and egregious example of the types of challenges universities face everyday. Even though Deborah Crowder was the main culprit in this crime, it is pretty clear from the report that she was working within a culture at  UNC that was, if not permissive at a minimum ambivalent, to what was going on. From advisors suggesting these classes to students, to her supervisor, to the students themselves there appears to have been a culture where ethics and professionalism took a back seat to other goals.

It seems unthinkable that a situation like that could occur at Virginia Tech, but when you think of all of the different goals that the school tries to balance, it is not impossible that something like this could happen unless an ethical and professional culture is actively maintained to fight it.

I think that there will always be bad actors in an organization as large as a university; people who willfully choose to act in inappropriate ways. Having these actors, like Deborah Crowder, is impossible to avoid. Having a culture which allows them to continue operating however, is not at all inevitable. It takes proper training and oversight but with the right program we can ensure that incidents like this are caught and corrected.

Inclusive Pedagogy — Week 7 Guidelines

Leave a comment

Next week we will examine contemporary diversity issues and think about how to use inclusive pedagogy in our classrooms. Just as our learning environments are complex, so are the individuals that comprise them. Everyone has visible as well as “invisible” cultural identities, and inclusive pedagogy attends to those differences. Inclusive pedagogy seeks to engage learners in ways that are inclusive and supports environments that are attentive to diversity. It also helps prepare students to contribute productively to an increasingly complex and globalized society by helping them develop a broader understanding of domestic and global diversity issues.

So, this is a big project. And an important one. Some of us have already thought about and worked extensively in this area, some of us are just dipping our toes in, and many of us are somewhere in between. This is ok. In fact, it’s even a plus.

To prepare for seminar next week, please read the required texts.* Start with the two short selections (on the Hidden Brain and diversity in the workplace). The selections by Claude Steele and the article on Brave Spaces / Safe Spaces are longer, but you need to read them and come to class ready to talk about them and work closely with the texts. (This means you will want to be able to access whatever version of the texts you read during class next week.) As usual, you may blog about whatever resonates most with you.

*If you want more of a deep dive or are already familiar with these texts, please explore the supplemental materials on Scholar. If there are items you think we should know about, please tweet them out to #gedivt

 

The future of metal casting: giving physical form to digital designs

Today was the day I gave physical existence to a purely digital entity.

My Casting Design and Simulation class has been dealing with the gating (channels for metal delivery) design for this part for a few weeks now:

Those thin features on the side are 1/16″ thick.

The students collectively created a design:

CAD view Part Design

And we turned it into a mold:

CAD view half mold
Only half shown here, but you get the picture.

I created a simulation of the fluid flow and metal solidification behavior of this digital design:

Using these simulations, we also predicted where porosity defects were likely to occur:

One spot at the top, and one spot in the dead center.

Alongside these models, we got the mold design 3D printed, allowing us to exactly replicate our digital design. Up to this point, everything existed solely on a computer. Here was the first physical manifestation of our process.

Down there in the shadows are some very, very thin features that we were convinced would never work. They’d either get burned through or just snapped off entirely.

IMG_5727

The mold halves were put together, to prepare for pouring.

After we poured iron into the mold and gave it a little bit of time to solidify, we opened the mold to see our results:

Yeah, probably still a little hot.

The sand and metal were still so hot that we could actively see the binder burning out and the sand dropping off as it lost all strength:

The slots came out!

Here’s the money shot–a large porosity hole exactly where the simulation predicted:

So not only have we now confirmed the accuracy and validity of the simulation, we have given exact physical form to an object that had only before existed in a digital space. This is the future.

Success!

 

Totally Terrific Teaching

The readings this week offered some valuable advice on how to develop an effective teaching mindset. Admittedly, most of it seemed rather intuitive – not because I’m a particularly talented teacher – but because I’ve been privileged to experience high quality teaching throughout my academic career. My best teachers were not the ones that conveyed information the most effectively. The best were the ones who could infect me with their enthusiasm and passion for the subject matter. With that sort of fuel, I think anyone is capable of directing their own learning faster and more efficiently than someone else would be able to teach them.

As a teacher, I try to be less of a source of information to my students than a resource to challenge their thinking. Rather than confirming something for them, I think it is far more valuable to present them with a challenge that would allow them to confirm or invalidate their suspicion/theory.

There are a few reasons I think this works well for me. I am 24 and my students are 20 – 21. I’ve always been very clear with them about my level of expertise and inexperience as a teacher. The students have a very realistic expectation to match and even surpass my understanding of at least some class concepts and materials. I think many students find the prospect of educating their teacher enticing. After all, what pupil doesn’t want to become the master?

Totally Terrific Teaching

The readings this week offered some valuable advice on how to develop an effective teaching mindset. Admittedly, most of it seemed rather intuitive – not because I’m a particularly talented teacher – but because I’ve been privileged to experience high quality teaching throughout my academic career. My best teachers were not the ones that conveyed information the most effectively. The best were the ones who could infect me with their enthusiasm and passion for the subject matter. With that sort of fuel, I think anyone is capable of directing their own learning faster and more efficiently than someone else would be able to teach them.

As a teacher, I try to be less of a source of information to my students than a resource to challenge their thinking. Rather than confirming something for them, I think it is far more valuable to present them with a challenge that would allow them to confirm or invalidate their suspicion/theory.

There are a few reasons I think this works well for me. I am 24 and my students are 20 – 21. I’ve always been very clear with them about my level of expertise and inexperience as a teacher. The students have a very realistic expectation to match and even surpass my understanding of at least some class concepts and materials. I think many students find the prospect of educating their teacher enticing. After all, what pupil doesn’t want to become the master?

What to learn from Alan Alda

Imagine that you are a good researcher who just got his PhD and made some highly cited publications. You tell yourself “Okay, I am very ready to get a tenure track position in a reputable university”. You apply for such a position and eventually you get the position. Preparing for the semester, you make brochures for the course you will teach, the class is full and many students still want to register the course, every thing seems to be perfect till now. However, after two lectures, the number of students who attend decreases and by the course drop deadline, you find only one fourth of students who registered the course will continue it.

A nightmare scenario for a new professor. What’s happened I believe I can understand multiples of the information I give in class. I avoided tough topics, why students left my class?! A lot of questions hit your mind, but let conclude all these in just one question:

Is a good researcher a good teacher ?

The answer is not always true. One of the pioneer in noticing this was Alan Alda an actor, director and writer, and a six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner.  He has had a lifelong interest in science. In 1990, he began his TV program “Scientific American Frontiers“.  The program continued until 2005 and mainly focused on informing the public about new technologies and discoveries in science and medicine. After interviewing hundreds of scientists, Mr. Alda became convinced that many researchers have wonderful stories to tell, but some need help in telling them.

This gave the idea to Mr. Alda to establish Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. The center aims to enhance understanding of science by helping train the next generation of scientists and health professionals to communicate more effectively with the public, the media, and others outside their own discipline. The message of Mr. Alda can be concluded in making a good communication with your audience, rehearse on the best way to deliver the same piece of information to different audience. For example, old people, young children, people very far from your field. By doing this, you ensure that you get the simplest way of illustrating something. There is a well known quote that says “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.” 

Other advice from Mr. Alda is to be always able to improvise. This comes by a lot of training and practicing. It is not good to memorize every word you will say in your lecture in advance, but you need to arrange your thoughts in a way that makes you cover everything in a timely and effective manner while ensuring that your audience are understanding what you say.

I think this specific way of science communication should be used by professors/ teachers in their classrooms. It is not hard but only requires training and preparation.

Teaching as Self-discovery

One of my favorite teachers told me years ago that teaching was a chance for you to reinforce material you have come across before, to solidify previous knowledge, to assign readings that you yourself have wanted to read. This way, the teacher is understood as a student who learns alongside his or her students. Teaching was thus a process of self-learning, self-discovery. Does this seem counter-intuitive? Are we not supposed to “know” our material before teaching it? Well, yes and no, it seems. We “know” enough to garner the respect of our students, that they acknowledge that the teacher knows more than them. But we certainly don’t know our disciplines as much as we feel we aught to, thus making sense of Einstein’s pithy statement “The more we know, the less we know”.

Sarah Deel’s “Finding my Teaching Voice” was a poignant personal narrative of her own journey towards finding her own voice as a teacher. She ultimately discovers that by discovering her ‘teaching voice’ she herself was ‘liberated’. This was not the feeling I had teaching for the first time at VTech. I recently taught my first undergraduate course last week. I have spent the semester watching other teachers and taking mental notes on where they are succeeding and where I need to do better. Yet when the moment came, I found myself giving a 1 hr and 15 minute powerpoint presentation — with an 11 minute movie clip — because giving presentations was what I knew as a student. It was where “my voice was”; but I didn’t feel liberated as Deel did, I felt ‘stuck’ in the mode of presentation. I later realized that while I did a reasonably good job at asking the students questions and getting them to respond, I did not really “teach” the material; I simply gave a presentation of the material. The next class, I watched how the professor “taught” the class. She didn’t speak for more than 15 minutes, breaking up the class into group discussions, journal entries and a debate. She taught, I presented; and she did it with a lot less stress! Fowler’s advice rang true and clear “Teaching is not all about the teacher; that is, teaching is not all about you”. Instead, the professor was what Fowler calls a “guide” and “facilitator”.

The professor who watched me later said that I shouldn’t beat myself up too much, that I did very good for my first time, and that “you looked very comfortable up there! If you have managed to get that out of the way already, you are on a great start”. While I was happy to hear positive reinforcement from the professor, I still felt deficient in something. But one thing rang true: I had to be myself. Teaching forces you to open up and take a risk in being yourself. There is almost no other way to do it. You figure it out very quickly in front of your students.

One important nugget I took from Deel regarding successful teachers:

“They [the teachers] explained their strategies to their students. The context of the particular classroom was very important; since the students in each class understood their teacher’s philosophy and evaluation style, they were able to learn from the teacher’s responses to their writing.”

Quickly: Fowler’s “Authentic Teaching Self” was remarkably useful and terse. This type of nuts and bolts approach to providing quick advice to aspiring teachers works like an effective tool-kit that repairs minor damages. I particularly appreciated the “physical aspects” section where teachers are advised to ‘warm up’ their body and mind prior to teaching. I do precisely the types of strategies she mentioned in order to remove nerves. It actually works! Warming up the vocal box is useful too.

There are a lot of different ideas floating in this piece. Apologies for the obvious disorientation in this post. I’d appreciate thoughts/reflections on something/anything here.

1 2 3 4 … 15