Education: October 2005 Archive Page

Serious Games Summit DC 2005Sharon Sloane: Exploring Game-Based Instructional Methodologies that Reach the Cognitive and Affective Learning Domains (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

The presentation, by Sharon Sloane, president of CEO of Will Interactive, began with a long video clip showing a military leadership training game, focusing not on combat but routine decisions, careerism, inappropriate comaraderie (a superior officer being too friendly in response to a screw-up), slackerism, and even on-the-job horseplay.

Sloane warned that some of the worst principles of brick-and-mortar teaching have moved into distance learning and serious games, and set up shop on CDs and on the internet.

She invoked Bloom's taxonomy, and suggested that behavior won't change unless the affective domain is reached, where emotions and life experiences convince people to apply the phsycho motor skills they've practiced, and the information they've been exposed to through cognitive doman. Affective learning leads to cognitive goals.

Tips to engage the Affective Domain.

• Be learner-centric.
  
• Know your audience
  
• Get real.
  
• Reach out to your learner's world.
  
• One more item I didn't get...

Example of reaching out into the world of the intended audience, from an HIV education program designed to change the attitudes and behaviors of young adults.

Rule #1: Never take medical advice from someone hornier than yourself.

Advised that the learners will have different motives. Simply pass a course? Become a more successful person? Avoid casualties and maintain morale in a war situation?

Introduced "Hate Comes Home," a game about bias and ethics, understanding, stereotyping and prejudice, used in California schools and elsewhere. (I'd call it a modern morality play.. just as doctrinal as Everyman, but filmed with shaky-camera effects and a documentary style - including "artistic" camera effects (slow-mo, etc.) and a voice-over narrative - that one doesn't usually see in a computer game. The military is learning, through the global war on terror, that the old style of teaching military doctrine isn't working. Since lower-level people are now making higher-level decisions in the field, the military needs to develop the critical thinking ability of people in the field, rather than relying on the centralized wisdom and experience of the upper-level officers.

According to a slide, "Generic content no longer works. We cannot rely on the leaner to make the leap to today's realities and unique circumstances. In GWOT [Global War on Terrorism], education and training must depict real events in real environments in order to work."

Today's artillerymen are asked to do peacekeeping tasks and interacting with civilians in towns, rather than "putting steel on target."

Described the characteristics of successful "game-based learning solutions." Based on a comprehensive learning strategy; customizing the game on the fly to meet the needs of the learner; get useful feedback that's not simply a score. Games need in-game reference materials that can be accessed easily during gameplay.

(By the way, that term is a wonderful example of marketese - no real human beings talk about "game-based learning solutions," but I can understand why Sloane wants to use that term in her presentations. Her game philosophy is essentially the same as Gibson's. but where he used Flash cartoons to teach a general point, she used videotape and special effects -- blood, simulated burns -- to create a gritty realistic detail. Having said that, the make-up was not exactly top-notch, and the acting was adequate in the training clip, low-key and documentary-style in the high school diversty game and a hostage-negotiation scenario, and really just adequate in a combat simulation. Sloane says her games are designed to recreate reality, and repeatedly apologized for only being able to show isolated clips out of context. Is it flippant of me to note that the games she showed were only partially successful at emulating the cinematic qualities of film?)

(I just asked her the above quesiton. She responded that her test audiences responded postively to this particular method of instruction. There is a difference, she noted, between educating people in the field to change their short-term behavior in order to achieve results, and teaching a complex concept in the context of a college course. While Sloane is an accomplished and confident speaker, numerous times she ran up against a wall when she realized the information the audience was able to glean from a three-minute clip is completely different from what a player might learn from an extended interaction with the whole training system.)

Serious Games Summit DC 2005Dolly Joseph and Mable Kinzie: Boys [sic] and Girls [sic] Game Play Preferences: Survey Results (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

I’m hemmed into an awkward back corner, so I hope the presentation’s good, since I won’t be able to get out easily.

I didn't catch the speaker's name at first, but it was Dolly Joseph speaking alone, about work that she and Mabel Kinzie did at the University of Virginia. She began with the thick theoretical grounding that I find comforting in an academic presentation -- though the use of “Pedagogy” in Tim Holt’s presentation as a term of insult used by a bully suggests the tension between academics and designers).

Joseph made multiple references to her dissertation... she invited the audience to interrupt with questions, working her way professionally and methodically through her slides, occasionally referring apologetically to information that she was not covering. That did spark a lot of requests for clarification from the audience. I'd like to see more of this study as it develops.

I found the very small statistical sample to be troubling -- 20 students for the survey, and just four for in-depth profiles. In addition the survey was a proxy -- measuring what students said about games, not actually measuring their reaction to games. For instance, rather than giving the students the chance to play four different games, and then observing how much time they spent on each game, the students were instead asked to answer a question about what kind of hypothetical games they would like.

To her credit, Joseph didn't make any grandiose claims about her findings -- she freely admitted the risks associated with making claims on such a small data set, though she did on several occasions express frustration that the data confirmed multiple stereotypes about children. If the data had challenged rather than confirmed those sterotypes, would she have presented her findings differently? (For more on gender and desing, see Utopian Entrepreneur, in which Brenda Laurel describes the flak she got from some feminists who were horrified that her company designed games for girls, and catered specifically to the friendship-related issues that are so important to girls.

What follows are my lightly-edited liveblogging notes.

She was building on her own research on the use of popular culture in education, and mentioned comic books.

Hm…. the presentation is based on comparisons between the activity of two different game camps in Charlottesville, Va., offered under the title “Got Game”.

A survey of the participants of two camps, featuring feedback gathered from a total of 21 participants. While I rather like the idea of having kids give feedback through surveys, journals, and a “video confessional,” that’s just 21 kids – not even a whole middle school class. That’s a pretty small sample to use, and the arbitrary choice of four out of these 21 students leads to problems. As long as a study doesn’t use this kind of profiling as evidence to support a statistical conclusion, I’m perfectly happy hearing what we can learn from the analysis.

The researcher chose four children to profile, with different ethnic backgrounds, learning styles, and gaming preferences.

• One student who liked games with clear goals and good positive feedback and strong closure, and thus liked a game called Bioscopia, which the researcher presented as like Myst. “None of us understood why it was fun.”
  
• Another student frequently asked “What is the point of this game?” Didn’t like educational goals embedded within the gameplay, she wanted to know what she was supposed to learn.
  
• Yet another student preferred collaboration during gameplay, liked controlling social interactions and adaptable goals.
  
• A fourth student gravitated towards complex, realistic problems, with an urban aesthetic, liked action and conflict. Liked to set his own goals.

All four of the profiled campers were proficient in “active play” – under the pressure of time, with rapid character birth and rebirth, starting over from the same point, and dichotomous storylines (good/evil). Educational games that included this kind of play were answered highly. Kids were not fooled by games that inserted quiz questions as barriers.

Explorative play – part of the game world is initially hidden; travel through physical space is important; discovering new areas leads to new challenges. Only one profiled camper liked this.

Problem-solving – Discreet challenges with set goals; hierarchical or parallel, multiple challenges that are generally independent. All of the four students enjoyed these. Clear challenges and readily apparent successes and failures, consequences are apparent. Some educational games are insufficiently challenging for middle-school children. Assembling puzzle-pieces or other simple tasks were not addressing the higher cognitive abilities of the advanced students.

Srategic play – long-term manipulation of resources; multiple pathways; greater complexity 2 of the 4 liked this mode; few educational games employ the open boundaries of this kind of gameplay – the complexity might be too challenging.

Social play – Intra-game, multi-player, and collaborative. Social play was not implicit in any of the games surveyed games.

Said the kids “were wild for” the idea of playing an online social game, but that element wasn’t part of any of the games tested.

Results: Design Suggestions (after looking at case studies of 4 children, from a pool of 21)


I asked the speaker to clarify – these are four suggestions for games that the researcher wishes would exist, because they contain elements that she says these fours students would like. [The ideological force behind the suggestions are at least as interesting as the gameplay suggestions themselves.]

1. Cures of the Rainforest: Goal – find plants with potential curative properties within the rainforest. Put together a party with characters who have certain background details. Teaching flora and fauna. [But wouldn’t a game that presented the political and economic choices that must be made by the government of a third-world country that possesses rainforests. Issues related to the economic dependence on tourism, poaching, the jobs of people who might be employed by a local logging company, the agenda of a Hollywood celebrity whose presence on the team would increase publicity but displace a scientist… ]
   
2. Vigilante P.I. – “Solve crimes and bring corrupt businessmen to justice.” Strategy and problem-solving, using mental powers and a bit of muscle. Forensics, chemistry, health hazards. (You would be able to shoot.) A question from the audience: Did you get backlash from suggesting shooting a person would be an appropriate element of a game?
   
3. Butterfly Babies – “Collect, breed, and ‘grow’ butterflies.” “Create a pretty butterfly, but use science to do it.” Biology, genetics, lab procedures.
   
4. Zoo Rescue – “Free a trapped zookeeper by traveling through a maze-like zoo.” Teaching biology and ecology, solving puzzles that lead you through passageways. Surprised to find a child who liked that kind of gameplay.
   

In response to a question I asked about the ideological decisions behind the game design choices, the researcher said that students who were worried about their on financial situation were more worried about saving their neighborhood; those students who had the luxury of worrying about the world did.

Analysis of a survey of the 20 children who participated in the study.

Boys more likely to play on consoles, girls more likely to play on computers.

Both genders preferred to play their own genders and ethnicities.

Girls preferred thinner female characters.

Boys preferred games in the street or sports fields, girls prefer games set in a mall to a meadow. (This result sparked a flurry of questions from the audience, that eventually established that participants were given a survey to take home, and for this particular question were asked to say which of the following four choices would be their favorite setting for a game: streets, sports, mall, and meadow.)

I don’t know how the following was determined, but boys preferred saving adults and senior citizens, girls would rather save young children. (I’m actually just as curious to know more about this item, but since I was one of the questioners about the previous item, I kept my mouth shut so the presenter could get through the material.)

On Oct. 31, the Serious Games Summit gets underway in Washington D.C. Its sole focus: To bring together the computer gaming industry with other experts from various fields for more than just a good time. --Beyond 'Flinch and Twitch' Games (Cybershake)

Thanks to some (partial) funding from SHU, I'll be going to this event. My students were crushed when I told them I was cancelling most of my classes Monday and Tuesday.

(There's a Monday class that meets for just one hour a week, and I'm going to let the students run that class themselves.)

Officials at Proctor Jr.-Sr. High School have banned access from school computers to an Internet site that students have been using to post to weblogs, or blogs.

Principal Chris Sousa said the decision to block the site from school was made because blogging is not an educational use of school computers. --Brendan McKenna --High school bans blogging (Rutland Herald)

We show the news consumer how the magic trick, as it were, was done: how the lighting was placed, wehere were the mirrors, wires, and sturts, what sleight-of-hand was employed. Yet our purpose in demystifying the news is not cynical dismissal. Rather, we appreciate news as a manufactured, even theatrical, artifact, as much as it is an engagement with reality. Watching research results go through the prism of media and get thereby refracted into multiple colors and shadings is valuable. It doesn't mean that the process is fraudulent or misleading. But it does reveal the action of the prism. --Murray, Schwartz and Lichter --It Ain't Necessarily So: How the Media Make and Unmake the Scientific Picture of Reality (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

In my lit classes, I often have to remind students that Ophelia and Huckleberry Finn are not real people, and that we can talk ourselves blue in the face about what their "true" motives were or what they "would have done" in a literary work with a different ending.

This book is an attempt do something similar in the world of journalism. For understandable reasons, students want to get the "right" answer, especially when they are still getting used to the whole idea of a college education. It's something that professional journalists face all the time.

In order to prepare students for this book, Friday afternoon I read them a series of jumbled facts, and asked them to turn them into a news story. I told them they could take every fact I said as if it had already been verified, I showed them the words as I read them, and I told them that they'd have ten minutes to write, and then I'd read through the whole thing again.


My students know that I can't resist a good Star Trek reference. In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the cadet Saavik reacts after a simulated mission results in the destruction of her ship.

Saavik: Permission to speak freely, sir?
Kirk: Granted.
Saavik: I do not believe this was a fair test of my command abilities.
Kirk: And why not?
Saavik: Because... there was no way to win.
Kirk: A no-win situation is a possibility every commander may face. Has that never occurred to you?
Saavik: No sir, it has not.
Kirk: How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life, wouldn't you say?
Saavik: As I indicated, Admiral, that thought had not occurred to me.
Kirk: Well, now you have something new to think about. Carry on.

I think most took Friday's activity for what it was. Like any lab exercise, it was artificial, set up to re-create only one controlled segment of a complex system. Of course it wasn't an ideal situation for them to write. Of course it wasn't fair, if "fair" means "optimized so that students will get the highest possible grade."

Since I'm not actually going to send them out on the street to report on crimes and accidents, I had to do something else to emulate the pressure of deadlines and the importance of filtering out correct but irrelevant facts.


And by the way, the article they submitted was worth a grand total of zero points -- though I did ask them to blog their reaction to the lab. In this case, I'm more interested in their ability to analyze and understand the process, rather than their ability to create product. Today students are submitting pitches for a long feature article, and they'll have over a month to work on it. The evaulation of "product" is part of the course, but after a series of reporting exercises that I think went over pretty well, I hope they'll make the adjustment to "process" smoothly.

Currently I work a very WIDE room for my freshman composition class. I'd estimate it's about four seats deep and ten seats wide. When I lead a standard class discussion, I have to march the length of the room -- from the door to the window at the far end -- and project my voice rather loudly when I'm on one side or the other. But that doesn't bother me. What's troubling is that it spreads the students far apart from each other. It divides them; and there is a sort of "faction" mentality that seems evident to me when debates get hot: one side argues against the other, from the comfortable distance of the double-wide trailer sized room.

You don't have to be a communications theorist to recognize that students tend to territorialize their space in a learning environment. --Musical Chairs (Pedablogue)

Last fall, whenever a student got up to give an oral presentation, I would sit in their vacated seat. I enjoyed the chance to see the room from so many different perspectives.

This great entry on classroom space got me thinking a little more about how my students' relationships with each other in the blogosphere affects the in-class dynamic.

In the past, when I've offered a free, no-bad-consequences draft review, I'm always disappointed at how few students take me up on it. I did notice that some of the same students who wouldn't submit rough drafts would have at least something prepared for an oral report. Perhaps they don't mind getting a zero on a rough draft when I'm the only one who knows they didn't do the work, but when I call on their name for their oral presentation, they didn't want to have to say "I'm not prepared" in front of their peers.

I thought I'd try to put this phenomenon to use, and started planning informal oral presentations a day or two before a rough draft was due. I eased the freshmen into it by letting them present on a personal topic of their own choice, so they would feel more comfortable presenting. For all my classes, I made it clear I wouldn't mark them down for saying "um" or for fidgeting.

While I saw the oral presentations as a way for students to try out new ideas without necessarily churning out pages and pages of detailed support, and while I thought the student papers improved markedly after we workshopped the thesis statements and supporting ideas the students floated during their informal presentations, too often the students were simply focused on getting through the presentation.

Displaced from the comfortable anonymity of their accustomed seat, students felt too vulnerable to appreciate constructive criticism. I graded the oral presentations very generously, because I wanted to reward and encourage the process rather than evaluate the product, but the anxieties students felt about performing made their way into their evaluations at the end of the course. Students didn't mention how much better their writing was as a result of their oral ordeals. Some even complained that their peers' presentations were so lame and repetitive that they would have preferred me to lecture more. My efforts to create a more student-centered learning environment seemed to invite a backlash. So a little reorganization was clearly in order.

This term, I've drastically reduced my reliance on formal student presentations. I let students know I don't want them to enter the classroom as a blank slate. In my lit classes, I've been distributing the teaching task, diffusing it among the whole student body, making it part of the routine environment of the classroom.

Each student needs to prepare an "agenda item" they have prepared in advance, and that they will be ready to share if called upon. I ask them to post a brief entry on their blog, 24 hours before class, in which they offer a quotation from the assigned reading, and state what their "agenda item" is -- that is, what they plan to talk about, when called on in class. Then, they bring to class a 200-word reflection, that mentions by name a student whose blogged idea has helped them develop their ideas about the assigned text.

Friday morning in "Drama as Literature," we were discussing the first two acts of Hamlet. Because I checked the student blogs before class, I already knew the students were talking about Hamlet's madness, Gertrude’s complicity, and the dramatic effectiveness of the ghost. The first student who spoke mentioned being inspired by a second student's blog entry. The second student then mentioned being inspired by a third student's entry. This went on for a string of six or eight students, for about fifteen minutes, each building on what the previous student had said, before the first pause in the discussion.

During that pause, I called attention to what had just happened, and praised the students for sustaining the conversation on their own.

When the students in this class give informal presentations, I split them up into small groups, and send them out to a courtyard or patio. I float around and try to listen in on the discussion, but my physical absence reminds them to think of their peers as their primary audience. Several students blogged about how much they enjoyed the experience, and the informal reflections they submitted afterwards were overwhelmingly positive.

Once when I was late to class due to a domestic incident (I told the class it involved a shower curtain, a large spider, and a potty-training toddler), I sent word via the division secretary that I'd be a bit late, and the students went around the room and shared their agenda items. When I did show up, they seemed quite pleased with themselves for having been so productive on their own.

I'm a little spoiled, since all the students in that class are English majors. I'm also teaching two sections of a lit seminar and a news writing course that includes students who are less than thrilled to be there. While some students are enthusiastic and dependably well-prepared, it's clear that some students haven't made the class a top priority. That's okay -- I got a C in my college Latin course, and it wasn't because I disliked the subject or the teacher, it was just because I chose to put my time and effort elsewhere.

The news writing class is changing the focus from a series of short exercises to some longer, more in-depth units, so I'm hoping I can use some of blog-enhanced classroom discussion techniques. In the next five or so weeks, we'll work our way chapter-by-chapter through two books, and I plan to have the students sign up for a particular chapter, and let a different student take the class through the "agenda item" sequence each time. At 32 students, that's large by SHU standards, but as a writing class, it's large by any standard. I'm going to let students know I expect them to participate regularly, and I'll start asking them to evaluate and reflect on their own contributions to the online and in-class discussion.

When I switched places with the students who gave oral presentations last year, I was trying to send a message that, for the next 20 minutes, I was just one of the students. But the act of trading places with the students emphasized the difference between us. When I wasn't sitting in a student space, I was The Teacher.

By asking all students to prepare agenda items, I am distributing the authoritarian role of the agenda-setter. It is sometimes stressful for me, since I have to work twice as hard weaving connections between the student agenda items, filling in gaps with 5-minute mini-lectures on catharsis or the role of the raisonneur.

I still haven't worked in "anagnorisis" or "the fourth wall," and earlier in the week, three students in a row asked me a question that stumped me. There were three high school seniors visiting the classroom that day, and I kept having to admit my ignorance. I'm teaching without a net when I let the students set the agenda -- but the 24-hour lead time really helps. I have time to prepare those 5-minute spurts of info, when I notice the students are hungry for background information on the Protestant reformation, or if they're puzzled by a mythological reference, or they're curious about the author's biography.

Rather than letting the students take turns being the "sage on the stage," I'd like them to take turns being the "guide on the side," and shouldering the responsibility. In a typical class, some student has usually checked the Wikipedia entry for an author's biography, or has read the author before, or got inspired and did some outside research.

Musical chairs is a good metaphor, but I'd like to think of removing the empty chairs that separate the students, until every student is connected with his or her peers all the time. If we all swap roles and trade ideas as rapidly and smoothly as my lit students did in Friday morning's Hamlet class, I think we'll all enjoy the result.

A. A suburban teenager's online diary, bursting with angst-y Goth poetry and "creative" grammar.

B. An alternative news source that can break stories the mainstream media won't touch.

C. A scholarly notebook, where a professor reviews books, brags about student accomplishments, and posts occasional cat pictures.

D. A list of web addresses, often focusing on a theme (such as data encryption, homeschooling, Latin-American economics, or ferns), recorded and evaluated by a meticulous web-surfer.

E. Any of the above, especially when updated frequently, and where visitors can add their own comments.

(Answer: E)

---

Seton Hill's blog site, blogs.setonhill.edu/nmj, developed by Dr. Jerz, allows any member of the Seton Hill community to keep an on-line journal (or comment on someone else's). Blogs are used both as a formal teaching tool and as an informal forum for students, faculty and administrators.

"Students who read my professional blog can see what I do when I encounter a new concept," says Jerz. "They see me testing my initial reaction against the facts as they emerge. They might see Dr. Arnzen [SHU associate professor of English] politely disagree with me. They might see me change my mind, or post a correction. That's very different from the dynamic you find in the traditional lecture."What is a blog? (A Multiple Choice Quiz) (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

This appeared as a sidebar in Seton Hill's alumni magazine. Becca Baker, from our PR office, asked me to submit 200 words defining "weblog," and I was feeling quirky and unconventional, and the quiz question was the result. For the intended audience, I didn't feel it was necessary to specify the reverse-chronological order of blog posts, but if the definition were a little longer, I wish I could have fitted that in somehow.

The main article was about my colleague John Spurlock's Fulbright-sponsored visit to Montenegro, where he blogged about his encounters with the students and ordinary citizens, in entries that were sometimes touching, sometimes hilarious, and always illuminating.

I'll try to get a PDF of the article online in the near future.

--Teaching Carnival II is here! (Scribblingwoman)

A great collection of teaching links, highlighting what teachers who happen to blog are saying about their work.

Settle thy studies (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

I've written before about using circle games in my teaching. Since students are wrestling with midterm projects and other major assignments, and since I'm teaching a large number of freshmen in 200-level courses this year, I'm seeing lots of worn-down students.

In my Drama as Lit course, up to now I've given the students modern plays, or I've given them modernized versions of older plays. The online and in-class discussions of Everyman and the York Corpus Christi plays went well, even though I filled in with more lecture material than I typically like to provide. Today, however, they were to read the first two acts of Marlowe's Faustus, and I didn't give them a modernized translation.

I figured some of them would need a bit of help getting into the play, so I did the first monologue of Faustus in his study.

These metaphysics of magicians,
And necromantic books are heavenly;
Lines, circles, letters, characters.
Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires.
O what a world of profit and delight,
Of power, of honour, and omnipotence,
Is promised to the studious artisan?
All things that move between the quiet poles
Shall be at my command. Emperors and Kings,
Are but obeyed in their several provinces,
But his dominion that exceeds in this,
Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man:
A sound magician is a demi-god.
Here, tire my brains to get a Deity.

I wish some of my students had a bit more motivation this time of year, but this play is a good one to remind me that the thirst for knowledge is not necessarily good.

I started with an interpretation of Faustus as a pompous professor -- which may not be that much of a stretch for my acting ability. At any rate, I imagined how Dr. Frasier Crane would do it. Before I went too far, I backed up and started over, this time entering the front of the classroom paging through a book of magic, which I then put down on one side of the table, as Faustus tried to distract himself with logic, medicine, law, and religion. (Before class started, I hid a book under the table, so that when Faustus sets aside his law book and looks for the bible, I pretended I had to hunt for it, and then when I pulled it out of its hiding place I pretended to blow dust off it. Sometimes that gets a laugh, but not this time. Oh, well.) When Faustus gives up on religion, I sort of caressed the prop bible, with the line "Divinity, adieu!" A little later, while gesticulating wildly, I knocked the bible off the table, and started after it as if by instinct, but then I left it there on the floor, and went on, like the evil overlord that Faustus thinks he can be.

Then when I finished the scene, I went back to the bible scene, and this time stood up and threw the bible across the room. (It was actually Faulkner, not the bible, that I threw. See this older blog entry about a teacher who tore a bible in class to make a point.)

I can never keep a straight face when I do the fourth version, so I apologized to the students and warned that it would be short. When Faustus goes for his magic books, I whipped out my PDA and grinned madly. The light from the PDA shone off my glasses, and the students said I reminded them of Gollum with his precious. (I'm sure my wife would say they're not far off with that comparison.)

In News Writing, we're starting a shift from a writing-intensive unit to a reading-intensive unit. For the next class, the journalism students will be looking at the editorials in the local paper. But I want them to have something to look for when they turn to that section of the paper.

The three main purposes of an editorial are to inform, to persuade, and to entertain. I am asking that they choose two of the three for an upcoming assignment. I do want the students to feel they can unleash the creativity and opinions they've had to suppress in order to "do news" in the traditional style, but of course there are limits.

To introduce that assignment, I pointed to a student who has shown a willingness to role-play in the past, and I said, "Okay, class. He is going to give me a political opinion, and I am going to respond to it. You tell me whether I am being persuasive."

The student responded with a statement about the Iraq war. I barely let him finish his sentence when I barked out, "What, are you stupid!??"

I stepped out of the role, in order to note how my voice cracked in just the right way to suggest outrage and madness. "Am I being persuasive yet?" I asked.

When the student went on with another sentence, I blurted, "I *hate* people who say things like that!" The class laughed, so I hissed a little. "Hate!!!"

I didn't quite have the courage to flounce around the front of the classroom like Morgan Spurlock did when he disparaged the McDonald's spokesperson's references to yogurt, apples, and salads. But once the students know me well enough, and when I'm sure I've picked a student who doesn't mind playing along, I loosen up a bit. The ham in me rejoices.

I see students calling me over to their desks to ask about a word problem, and half the time me reading the word problem aloud to them is enough to answer their question. I see students skimming over paragraphs of text (not that I blame them) and then asking me what they really needed to read in order to solve the problem. I seldom see any indication that students are reading their textbooks beyond skimming over the examples so that they can match them to the homework questions. I’ve lost track of the number of students I’ve tutored, or fielded during office hours, who did not avail themselves of the indices of their textbooks. The reason they couldn’t show that two events were mutually exclusive was because they didn’t know what “mutually exclusive” meant, nor did they think to look it up. --This is why my little college-math-ed blog has so many readers (Tall, Dark and Mysterious)

Because I typically teach writing and literature courses, the class in which I teach the most "content" is currently News Writing. I've ejected the huge $80 textbook in favor of several smaller books, each of which I can reasonably expect the students will read cover-to-cover. I carefully scoured key chapters of those readings and populated my opening lecture with references to them, so that when students encounter that key lesson just before it becomes important, sometimes they get an "aha" moment when they realize they've already learned (in class) the information that's being delivered in more depth in text. But because I chose just the right books, and knew them well, I can tailor my in-class presentations to deliver what the books leave out.

I confess, making all that material fit together was very hard to do. I can imagine, if I didn't have the luxury of picking the textbooks I wanted to use, and if I were mandated to deliver content X so that students will pass test Y, I can see how I might lean more on delivering short in-class explanations of what students "really" need to learn, while still virtuously assigning chapters that cover the material I'd like to teach, but don't have time to emphasize in class. This might lead students to depend on skimming, and might train them to respond quickly and vivaciously to points I brought up in class, while not helping them develop the ability to respond to material that they themselves read.

So... reading how a math professor parses the "students aren't prepared" problem has helped me see how I might respond. I'm still not sure what the solution is, but I can't simply blame the high schools of America, since, like it or not, it's my job to help the students pick up the pieces.

While things have settled down a bit, this time of year is very stressful for freshmen. I've got a high proportion of freshmen in two of my 200-level classes, and while I pause every so often to deliver a particular message to the freshmen, I'm not teaching them as freshmen courses, so we are together confronting the challenges of collegiate work.

We expect them to be able to follow us around the house, picking up after us, chattering with us like C-3PO, reading our emotions with the accuracy, if not the intent, of HAL. While robots have proved indispensable in narrow kinds of work, like assembly lines, when it comes to interactions with unpredictable, flesh-and-blood humans, they have yet to deliver on the promise of more lifelike responses. --Larry Gallagher --R Is for Robot  (Wired)