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Heterarchy and Higher Education

10 Oct

Nodism Sketches

Someone on Twitter – forgive me, I can’t remember who! – recently mentioned the book The Sense of Dissonance by David Stark at Columbia University. I hadn’t heard of the book and requested it from the library. Just in the first chapter (available on Stark’s book website here), I’m already finding some compelling stuff.

The concept of “heterarchy” is fascinating to me, in multiple contexts – including media and journalism, naturally. Stark discusses an example from the tech industry in detail in a later chapter. (It’s also used in other fields, as this Wikipedia entry demonstrates.)

Applying this idea to higher education is fascinating. Check out these paragraphs:

…in an increasing number of areas, many firms literally do not know what products they will be producing in the not so distant future. To cope with these uncertainties, instead of concentrating their resources for strategic planning among a narrow set of senior executives or delegating that function to a specialized department, heterarchical firms embark on a radical decentralization in which virtually every unit becomes engaged in innovation. That is, in place of specialized search routines in which some departments are dedicated to exploration while others are confined to exploiting existing knowledge, the functions of exploration are generalized throughout the organization.

These developments increase interdependencies between divisions, departments, and work teams within the firm. But because of the greater complexity of these feedback loops, coordination cannot be engineered, controlled, or managed hierarchically. The results of interdependence are to increase the autonomy of work units from central management. Yet, at the same time, more complex interdependence heightens the need for fine-grained coordination across the increasingly autonomous units. (p. 21)

…authority is no longer delegated vertically but instead emerges laterally. … A young interactive designer…expressed this succinctly: When asked to whom he was accountable, he replied, “I report to [the project manager] but I’m accountable to everybody who counts on me.” (pp. 22-23)

Stark also describes the role in heterarchical organizations of “diverse evaluative principles” (I skipped ahead to the book’s conclusion for this succinct statement):

The assets of the firm are adaptively increased when there are multiple measures of what constitutes an asset. The same is true at the societal level. Value is amplified when there is organized dissonance about what constitutes the valuable….We do better when more of us with varied voices ask this question from different standpoints of what is worthy. (p. 212)¹

His explanation raises all kinds of questions for me, including these:

  • What would it mean if higher ed institutions turned over responsibility for innovation to academic departments, asking them to envision completely new ways or radical innovations with which they could best accomplish their educational goals?
  • Would losing the organization offered by the larger university hierarchy lead to chaos — or, freed from the strictures of imagining only what would work within the context of the entire institution, could entirely new means of educating at the university level be envisioned?
  • Are faculty too socialized into and comfortable within existing hierarchies to embrace the interdependence and new accountabilities inherent to a heterarchical approach?
  • Would a heterarchical structure be compatible with current funding structures in place for higher ed? If not, what would be alternatives?
  • Are we maintaining “diverse evaluative principles” with regard to higher ed, or is the increasing focus on workforce preparation diminishing the value of higher education as a societal asset?

I don’t find much discussion of the links between “heterarchy” and higher ed. Here’s one connecting to the concept of “ecovillages”; here’s one in the British context; here’s one about K-12 education. Am I missing others?

The “heterarchy” concept is new to me, and it’s entirely possible I’ve misunderstood Stark’s thinking — and, I admit, I’m only about 25 pages into the book. I have no doubt that it’s about to get much more complicated in fun ways. But I love it when a new idea with so many potential applications gets my brain off and running.

What do others think, about the idea in general or about this application of it? Please share your thoughts.

¹ Stark, D. (2009). The sense of dissonance: Accounts of worth in economic life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Image by Flickr user Dan Zen.

New Post at MediaShift: Training Magazine Professionals Today

5 Sep

When I was a senior at Trinity University, I took both the Magazine Writing and Magazine Production classes offered in the Department of Communication, even though I was an English major. I still have copies of my production class’s magazine, of which I was the editor.

Those two classes, taught by Sammye Johnson, had a major impact on the path of my education and my later career choices. While I was in grad school, I was fortunate to return to Trinity as a part-time instructor and to teach the production class myself. It was a great challenge, but was also lots of fun.

I was impressed and excited to learn, in the process of writing my latest MediaShift story, that some magazine classes are no longer producing print magazines, but instead have gone all-digital. Though I’m a little sad that the students won’t experience the anticipation and thrill of receiving their freshly printed magazines at the end of the semester, the new directions of these innovative courses are well-suited to today’s changing industry.

Read the full story here!

 

Photos and Photoshopping by me, with guest appearances from the When Words Collide textbook, the AP Stylebook for iPhone, Backpacker’s iPad edition via Zinio…and even a few print magazines, including Afar, Wired, Portland Monthly, and New Scientist.

Connections to the Scholarly Past

27 Jun

I realized today that due to my job transition this summer, I will be without access to scholarly publishing databases until I get a login and password to the library resources at my new college. I also realized that I haven’t used a print version of a scholarly article in over three years.

PCL at UT-Austin

The Perry-Castaneda Library (aka PCL) at UT-Austin. I spent many, many, many hours here. Photo by Timothy Vollmer on Flickr.

As a grad student at UT-Austin, I was able to find just about any print journal I needed, including some very old issues from the 1940s and 1950s. I also used the university’s special collections to find old magazines for my research, which was fun. I made a special trip to Texas A&M once to look at some old editions of conservative political magazines for a research project [PDF link to article].

Since joining the faculty at Fresno State in 2008, I’ve used the library stacks a bit, but never to find a print journal article. The Fresno State library’s holdings are of course smaller than UT-Austin’s, understandably. But more significantly, I’m now relying almost entirely on databases like Communication and Mass Media Complete to find references I need, along with my beloved Google Scholar and other digital sources. I’ve used Interlibrary Loan a few times to request articles not available in full text or posted elsewhere online.

I love using the library. I loved going to find Warren Breed’s 1955 article on social control in the newsroom in a dusty old edition of the journal Social Forces. (Now it’s online, naturally.) It was compelling to me to see a half century worth of knowledge on the shelf, there for the exploration.

Of course, I’m also just as big a fan of the iPad and e-reading as anyone else out there. I taught a whole graduate course last fall without printing out a single journal article, keeping everything paperless by reading it all on the iPad.

I am curious, though, about what it means to lose a physical connection to the works of scholars of the past. A university library’s paper editions may be more accessible to community members seeking scholarly articles, so I suppose that’s an argument for retaining them, especially considering academic publishers’ grip on online distribution. (An example of the conflicts here.)

Some, uh, exciting reading. Photo by marlened on Flickr.

Do we researchers gain anything by being able to physically touch and browse scholarly journals? Are databases sufficient for journal articles, but academic books still worthy of print publication? (If so, what’s the difference?)

Maybe there’s simply a sense of connection to a scholarly legacy that is gained by keeping the paper around. When I strolled the stacks at UT-Austin during my Ph.D. program, I felt a growing sense of connection to the centuries of authors whose work surrounded me, as if it were part of my scholarly apprenticeship to simply spend time in the presence of their thoughts.

And perhaps that’s simply a romantic ideal now outdated — just as it now seems silly to think that the tangible feel of a book is irreplaceable, when I happily snuggle in bed with a Kindle book.

Students’ Questions: More, Better, Faster?

3 Mar
Questioned Proposal

Photo by Ethan Lofton.

I have thought a lot about the nature of questions and their relationship with my teaching.

Of course, I always want students to ask questions in class. I welcome all questions, because they show engagement with the class (even if superficial), but I do certainly savor the insightful, penetrating student question that takes discussion to the next level.

On a bigger scale, I want my class to be about students’ questions so that the topics feel relevant and interesting to them. I don’t always know what students want to know or to be able to do after the end of a course. I often do surveys at the start of a semester to see what they’re thinking. And, naturally, I’ll always need to supplement their interests with other things they didn’t know they’d be interested in; they don’t know what they don’t know yet. But I want their curiosity to guide a great deal of our class.

I tried one semester to designate a question of the day for each class session on the schedule. We ended up talking about different things than my questions had originally mentioned. Again, though, that’s me imposing my questions on the class.

I really like this idea from the Teaching Professor blog by Maryellen Weimer at Faculty Focus, which combines a question from the professor with students’ own questions, generated after they have gained knowledge about the subject:

Victoria Costa writes about teaching introductory biology and chemistry courses to nonscience majors and beginning the courses with what she calls a course question: “How does chemistry (or biology, depending on the course) impact my personal life and society?” This question forms the basis of the course final, provides the framework within which students pose for themselves a “personal perplexity” or question of particular interest to them. In their final, an essay, they explain this question’s relevance to them and society, and they use course content to explore the question’s answer.

Costa’s course assignments also connect to the “course question.”

This semester, I’ve had my grad students in Qualitative Methods submit five questions about their assigned readings instead of the assignment I’ve previously used, which was a one-page response to the readings. I read over the students’ questions and use them in class. The questions highlight their areas of uncertainty, make connections among the readings, and help me get everyone participating in discussion.

I have also had my 110-student undergraduate class divided into teams this semester and last fall. Each team of five students submits a form at the beginning of class that asks for a discussion question related to the reading. I read the forms as they finish them, highlight interesting or recurring ones, and talk those over with the class before we begin the rest of the day’s activities. This has also been pretty successful.

I know many faculty bemoan students’ seeming lack of curiosity about the subjects we teach, but if we get them started by asking them to take time to examine their knowledge and think about the topic’s complexity, they often find provocative and fun issues to ask about.

I’ve struggled, though, with finding more ways to elicit and integrate students’ own interests and questions into our class — particularly in the large undergraduate class I teach, and especially “on the fly,” when questions are sparse in the middle of an activity or a lecture portion in class.

What other methods have you used to help students’ questions guide your courses and class sessions, and to keep the questions and curiosity flowing?

Getting Started with the iPad: Teaching

2 Sep

A slide from this morning's class on the 2Screens app.

Update: I’ve written a newer post about teaching with the iPad, if you’re interested in seeing how some of my later experiments worked out.

My first effort to teach using the iPad wasn’t entirely voluntary. The DVI-to-VGA adapter for my MacBook Pro failed, and because I couldn’t get a new one in time for my class this morning, I spent a frantic 45 minutes before class buying two new apps, tweaking my morning lecture to be compatible, and testing connections to be sure everything would work.

So, my complete list of technology employed in this morning’s class?

MacBook Pro, iClicker base and USB cable, iClicker instructor remote, iPad with dock-to-VGA adapter, 2Screens iPad app, iPhone with Bluetooth activated, 2Screens Remote iPhone app.

Whew! I arrived to class 15 minutes early to hook it all up.

This list of technology is not really what I anticipated when I first planned to teach using the iPad. I thought it would be pretty seamless: make my Keynote presentation with embedded videos, animation, etc., as usual; sync it to the iPad; connect it to the projector, and go, with my iPhone as the remote.

I forgot a couple of major issues along the way, though, and didn’t know some other key facts. The biggest drawback I wish I’d known is that the iPad doesn’t simply project whatever is on the screen. Only apps that have that capability will project. You can’t project items purchased from iTunes (thanks, Apple!). Apparently the YouTube and Netflix apps do project, but I haven’t tried them myself yet.

An obvious and class-specific problem: I use iClickers in this large class of 120 students to take attendance, give quizzes, and do participation activities. I can’t connect the iClicker receiver base to the iPad (no USB port and no compatibility). Therefore, the laptop still has to go to class with me anyway.

Also, I have iWork ’08 on my MacBook. The iPad version of Keynote only accepts files saved with Keynote ’09. This means I have to request an upgrade from my tech support folks. In the short term (very short, this morning), I have to export my Keynote file to PDF (losing all the video, transitions and animations), then flip through the PDF using an app called 2Screens.

2Screens ($4.99) is not bad. There’s very little explanation in the help menus or website about how to use it, but once you muddle through, you can show a PDF or PowerPoint file easily. It didn’t like my Keynote file this morning, and I’m still trying to figure out why (it may be too large). You can also draw on the slide, and your doodles project on the screen.

A screenshot of the 2Screens Remote app on my iPhone.

The 2Screens Remote app ($2.99) for the iPhone worked well for me via Bluetooth. There’s no preview of the next slide, which is annoying when you’re in the back of a lecture hall and wonder what’s coming up next, but a positive factor is that the Bluetooth connection still functions from that distance. Connecting via Bluetooth was easy – probably easier than the routine I hear that Apple’s Remote app requires over wifi, when you’re on a secure campus network.

My overall presentation experience was a little rough. I have also read online that Keynote on the iPad doesn’t even save all the characteristics created in the full version of Keynote, which may be a frustration even once I get upgraded to iWork ’09.

For some presentations, I could get by with the combination of tools I tried today, but for classes or other times I’m using lots of media, the iPad may not cut it yet.

On other fronts, I’ve had more success. I am enamored with the Attendance app ($3.99; suggested to me by Marcus O’Donnell), and am about to start using it not just for taking roll, but also for tracking group participation and selecting random students to harass, I mean question, in class. It creates groups for you as well based on imported CSV files (e.g., what Blackboard will export from your roster). I’m going to test that function this weekend now that add/drop is over.

A marked-up reading I assigned to some independent study students.

I’ve also had a great time using iAnnotate ($9.99) as a PDF reader and note-taker. I love being able to read, highlight, underline and create notes right in the app. These features have already saved me over 100 pages of printing this semester, helping me justify the app’s cost.

Three of my "notebooks" in the Chapters app.

Finally, for various other purposes, I’m finding the Chapters app ($3.99) extremely useful. I have a “notebook” for each of a couple of committees I’m on, one for class prep notes for my graduate seminar, one as a personal workout log, and so on. It’s cleanly designed and functional. I like that it dates each entry, but you can change dates to be past or future, so I can plan future classes and enter notes in advance. (Mismatched dates would drive me nuts.) I am thrilled to move toward paperless class sessions and committee meetings.

Gee Ekachai also pointed me to this resource for academics wanting to use the iPad productively, created by a professor at Marquette. There are some great tips there.

Have you found other ways to integrate the iPad into your teaching? Have solutions to my problems? I’d love to hear about them.

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