Academia: April 2008 Archive Page

Inside Higher Ed:

"Information on computer science subjects in Wikipedia is likely to be accurate and informative, often using unique resources to illustrate concepts that are not available to print media," wrote de Medeiros in an e-mail. "This probably derives from the fact that computer scientists use the computer as their main form of access to scientific articles and journals, that they take advantage of electronic forms to disseminate their research, including instructional materials in various formats. Researchers and educators of high caliber are probably behind most Wikipedia articles in computer science."

In all likelihood, tech-savvy scholars are among those keeping such isolated corners in the digital stacks of Wikipedia relevant, up to date and accurate. For computer science, especially, many topics on Wikipedia are in a form polished and accessible enough to assign to students as reading, and the subjects aren't controversial in a way that would inspire the sort of back-and-forth citation wars that cause some articles to fluctuate wildly between competing versions. But other topics get assigned from Wikipedia as well -- not least in courses about digital culture itself.

Pew / Internet (PDF):

Most teenagers spend a considerable amount of their life composing texts, but they do not think that a lot of the material they create electronically is real writing. The act of exchanging emails, instant messages, texts, and social network posts is communication that carries the same weight to teens as phone calls and between-class hallway greetings.... Yet despite the nearly ubiquitous use of these tools by teens, they see an important distinction between the "writing" they do for school and outside of school for personal reasons, and the "communication" they enjoy via instant messaging, phone text messaging, email and social networking sites.

Inside Higher Ed:

1998 was the last time that John Gallaugher, an associate professor of information systems at Boston College's Carroll School of Management, used a traditional print textbook. He assigned it to his graduate-level introductory course in information systems. The book cost about $150. He also assigned supplemental reading -- trade press articles, online case studies and the like. Student feedback was clear: The textbook cost was too high, and they valued the supplemental material more.

He agreed on the price complaint, calling some versions "oppressively expensive." So Gallaugher stopped assigning the textbook and began developing syllabuses from existing online materials, including his own. He's posted PowerPoint slides and podcasts of his lectures online ever since.

In recent years, I have gravitated towards using a collection of brief, specialized texts, including online resources wherever possible, rather than one big textbook that's so thick I either feel like I have to assign extra chapters out of guilt (after all, the students paid for the whole book). 

Of course, often I want the students to study a specific living author, or a 20thC author whose works are still under copyright.  But buying the author's own book is different from buying a behemoth that includes a few pages about the author's work.

The WashPo ruminates on the social significance of the activities of the brain-eating collegiate undead.

The 2005 inaugural Zombies game drew about 70 Goucher students. Since then, as many as 200 have played, making it one of the most popular student activities -- even though it's not an official student activity -- among the school's roughly 1,500 students. The game has spread to other campuses, with thousands of students playing this month at Cornell University, Penn State University, Bowling Green State University and the University of Maryland, among others.

But as Zombies' popularity has grown, criticism of it has grown, too -- especially since last April, when a severely disturbed English major named Seung Hui Cho armed himself with two semiautomatic handguns and killed 33 people, including himself, at Virginia Tech University. In the immediate wake of that shooting, Humans vs. Zombies became controversial, raising a collegiate version of the prevailing question of our time: What is the balance between security and freedom? And it prompts another fascinating question: What can a group of young people learn about one

For a second, I really wanted this to be true. Great satire from The Onion.

According to Mead's website, the ruling lines in the grad-school-ruled notebooks will be placed 3.55 millimeters apart, making them "infinitely more practical" for postgraduate work than the 7.1 millimeter college-ruled notebooks. In addition, the standard 1.5-inch top margin normally provided for dates and headers will be halved, and the left-hand margin will be eliminated entirely.

"Just think: If you are writing a dissertation on elements of thanatopsis and necromimesis as they relate to cacaesthesian themes of mid-20th-century Irish literature, do you really want your notebook lines to be more than seven millimeters apart?" Luke said. "Of course not."

"When you're in grad school, every millimeter counts," he added.

The abstract from a psychology conference presentation that argues World of Warcraft lowers the anger levels of players is getting a lot of attention online.  The term "sex" (which appears in the title paired with "violence") seems to mean "gender" in the abstract, so the title may be a bit misleading. I haven't heard from anyone who attended the conference presentation, and neither have I read the full study.

Sex and violence and playing games: reduced levels of anger after violent online play
Jane Barnett, Mark Coulson, Nigel Foreman, Middlesex University

Objectives: This study had two main aims. First, to explore the types of anger-causing scenarios experienced when playing WoW. Second, to identify the state emotions experienced before and after the anger-causing scenarios, as a function of sex and personality.

Design: Male and female WoW players (aged between 12 and 83 years) provided examples of anger-causing scenarios they experienced while playing the game (these scenarios formed the World of Warcraft Questionnaire: WoWQ). These scenarios plus other questionnaires examining anger, aggression, and personality, were administered as an online survey. Respondents completed state and trait mood measures, played WoW for a minimum of two hours, and then completed the state measures again. Participants also reported situations ingame that had made them feel angry or aggressive.

Method: Participants were recruited using the official WoW gaming forums. The forum post provided players with a link that took them to the introductory page of the survey. The final number of respondents was 292.

Results: Principal components analyses found a structure identifying four main anger-causing themes in WoW. Correlational and regression analyses examined the relationships between these WoW scenarios, and the emotional and personality constructs of participants. Mixed ANOVAs examined differences between male and female state moods before and after playing WoW. Results suggest that although online gamers are more likely to feel calm or tired after playing, the post-WoW mood state is dependent on sex, age, and personality.

Conclusions: The identification of a specific gamer personality type helped to outline the possible benefits and risks of these individuals who play video games. A standardised questionnaire was developed to examine the concepts investigated in this research, i.e. how anger and aggression vary as a function of personality, sex, and age, in gamers and non-gamers. This study improved the understanding of and the ability to respond effectively to public health threats that arise from playing computer games, and encouraged more responsible communication regarding these issues.

My Intro to Literary Study students read Lynn Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves while I was away at a conference for most of last week. They really seem to enjoy this book. Early on this term, I noticed a critical mass of students who try to make their blog a place to practice writing for a real audience, rather than simply a place to "do their homework."  I'm also seeing a lot of deliberately playful use of language, dancing around and sometimes pushing beyond the boundaries of academic writing.

I can't even believe how interesting a book on punctuation can be. I'm learning - AND HAVING FUN TOO! Look at that, I'm having so much fun that I caps-locked. --Jessie

Alright here it goes... I, STEPAHNIE MARIE WYTOVICH, ADMIT TO LIKING THIS BOOK. Gah.  Ok I guess I feel a little better now.  -- Stephanie

I won't deny it, I'm afraid of the exclamation mark.  I have been going to therapy and I've made improvements, but I'm still a little!-phobic.  Exclamation marks are so strong! -- Erica

I have to say I like ellipsis because, the other reason they are used is to trail off in an intriguing manner.... -- Tiffany

I use italics way too much. -- Lauren

Last year, I enjoyed reading In the Clickstream, a speculative blog-based thinkpiece from Mike Edwards, who teaches composition at the U.S. Military Academy. With Mike, I participated in a workshop at the 4Cs, where I got to meet two majors who are also composition instructors.  Both my brother and sister work for defense contractors, and I grew up just outside Washington D.C., so I'm not a stranger to the culture of the defense industry, but it was a very interesting experience hearing military instructors talk about their experiences teaching literature and composition officers-in-training.  One of the many things I picked up at this conference was some cultural context to help me to interpret this piece from Wired:

Since the start of the Iraq war, there's been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs -- and the servicemembers who want to keep them. One faction sees blogs as security risks, and a collective waste of troops' time. The other (which includes top officers, like Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell) considers blogs to be a valuable source of information, and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, both at home and abroad. 

This 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University, "Blogs and Military Information Strategy," offers a third approach -- co-opting bloggers, or even putting them on the payroll. "Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering," write the report's co-authors, James Kinniburgh and Dororthy Denning.

The Conference on College Composition and Communication is the big annual meeting of college writing instructors. One often encounters technical writing instructors, social scientists, ethnographers, and new media innovators (we had Larry Lessig give a featured address a few years ago), as well as traditional essayists and grammar mavens. It's the kind of place where someone can say, "That reminds me of Aristotle's five canons of rhetoric... inventio, dispositio, elocutio, actio, and... uh.. .what's the other one?"  and it's likely that the others will get the joke.

While walking around the city after the conference was over, I had a vision of a future 4Cs conference that made me giddy. I'll tell you about it in a little bit. First, let me talk about the conference.